HIAWATHA BRAY sends this report from Capitol Hill:

I just got back from DC, where I covered the hearing on US Internet companies in China. Boy, those congressfolk don’t know how to cut it short! We were an hour 45 minutes into the hearing before the first witness uttered a sound. Pitiful. No WiFi in the hearing room either. All the livebloggers had to use Ethernet cable. I think it makes sense not to have wireless in government buildings, as a rule–too many security problems.

But I can’t see why they can’t hook up a router just for the occasional hearing and such.

I ended up filing my story from a nearby Starbucks. As I was finishing up, I noticed about six middle-aged, highly capable-looking men and women at a nearby table, poring over printed PowerPoint slides and various documents, tapping their Blackberries, and nattering on about the Centers for Disease Control and systems for tracking the health of the nation’s livestock. Sure enough, these guys were hard at work planning for a possible avian flu outbreak in the US. Right there, in the shadow of the Capitol, at a Starbucks.

You may laugh, but I felt proud. Stuff like this is one reason I love my country. We make fun of politicians and bureaucrats all the time; God knows I do. But a lot of these guys–probably most of them–work really hard, and think really hard and are trying desperately to keep the rest of us alive. Think about most governments throughout history–or even most governments in the world today. Political power often attracts the worst of the worst–gunsels, road agents and chiselers. We get our share here too. But I bet most of the people working for us are just like these guys. Plain good people, doing their best. I thank God I live in a country full of them. Even if they do spend too damn much of my money!

Indeed. My brother, who spends a lot more time in the third world than me, often makes this point. Despite complaints about our government, often justified ones, it works better than many. Of course, that’s partly because we complain, instead of responding with hopeless resignation.