THE ADMINISTRATION’S NEW SMALLPOX VACCINATION POLICY IS OUT, and it’s getting rather mixed reviews from MedPundit and The Bloviator, two medico-bloggers whose stuff is always worth reading.

Here, from MedPundit, is a great story lead for investigative journalists — how local health departments are spending their bioterrorism money:

This reliance on local health departments to carry out the plan is more than a little worrisome. Not all public health departments are created equally, and many of them are little more than well child and sexually transmitted disease clinics. Last week, I got an inkling of what ours is probably doing with their bioterrorism money. I received a slick package on preventing falls in the elderly. It came in a nice folder with nice, glossy handouts and reminder cards for patients. Normally our health department provides handouts on xeroxed sheets, and it never presents them in a package like this. I could be wrong, but I have to wonder where they suddenly got the money for public relations.

Pork: seek, and ye shall find. The Knox County Health Department seems to be spending its bioterrorism money on bioterrorism, though — and to prove it, they’ve hired my secretary (who just got her degree in public health) away. Two of the remaining secretaries in our pool (out of four) are at risk, too. One’s a reservist Combat Engineer, and the other a military intelligence reservist. In the event of war, my photocopying might not get done.

I don’t think that’s an especially major cost, but I have to note that the usually-more-sensible American Library Association is upset that Palestinian photocopiers have been destroyed, and has adopted a resolution decrying that, and other war-related interruptions of Palestinian library service. I was unable, however, to find a resolution denouncing Palestinian terrorism, which has presumably impacted the degree of service at libraries in Israel.

UPDATE: A librarian reader says the ALA is no longer a sensible organization, and sends this link to an even more biased resolution. Another librarian sent me the same thing, with the same sentiments, and says that the ALA’s public-policy apparatus has been captured by the loony left.

I guess I’ll have to keep this kind of thing in mind when I evaluate the ALA’s public statements on the Patriot Act, etc.