PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: I think this is right:

It was only last month that the Senate staged a breast-beating debate about the need to control the rampant pork-spending abuse of earmarks — boondoggle appropriations tucked into vital legislation with little public scrutiny. Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, orated on the side of the angels in calling for reform. Well, the angels have lost another player. As the Senate returns from recess it will confront the year’s prize porker blithely trotted out by Senator Lott — a $700 million earmark to relocate a Gulf Coast rail line, which was just rebuilt, post-Katrina, at a cost of $250 million. . . .

Even worse, Senator Lott and his fellow Mississippi Republican, Thad Cochran, are attaching this frivolous add-on to a bill that is supposed to be used to pay for emergencies — specifically the war in Iraq and hurricane reconstruction.

Senator Lott angrily resents any description of his pet project as a right of way to the slot machines. He insists the rail line needs higher ground and his constituents better protection. But it seems clear the twin traumas of Iraq and Katrina are being used as cover. Economic development is a fine goal for the Gulf Coast, but it deserves careful consideration, not a devious rush to the pork barrel.

Indeed.

UPDATE: People who think that this kind of thing won’t matter to the GOP should read this post.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Blogger LawHawk offers a defense of Trent Lott’s railroad-to-nowhere project. I’m not sure I’m convinced, but given that I’ve just come to dislike Trent Lott in general, I feel that I should go out of my way to link suggestions that I’m wrong about this project.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Mark Hessey emails: “Hmm, before I clicked thru I was skeptical as well, but I came away thinking LawHawk makes a pretty good argument.” Reader Christian Lane thinks that LawHawk’s argument underscores Trent Lott’s problems:

I think what this shows is that Trent Lott has become an ineffective advocate for his constituents’ needs. The relocation of the railway may be a good idea or even necessary, but Mr. Lott’s support for it obscures the merits. If his first priority were serving the needs of the citizens of Mississippi, he would either (i) take a strong stand against pork, including specific pork for Mississippi, to (hopefully) demonstrate that he is against pork, but the railway project isn’t pork or (ii) step aside. I doubt that will happen and I think the failure to do so implies that Mr. Lott’s real motivations as a Senator are not necessarily in line with the needs of the citizens of Mississippi.

Ouch!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Brent Ramsey emails:

Have to give you some input on the CSX railroad project supported by Senators Lott and Cochran. I lived in Long Beach, MS for 23 years. That project has been on the books at least that long and longer. The way that railway crosses the towns of Ocean Springs, Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, and Pass Christian with literally dozens of road crossing many of which have no physical barriers, just a warning sign for a railroad crossing kills dozens of Mississipians each year. It is a worthwhile project to protect lives and to improve rail transportation across the MS gulf coast. I retired and left MS in 2002 and now live in western NC so I have no vested interest just an opinion that it is a worthwhile project and really is not correctly described as pork.

Hmm. Well, it may be worthwhile, though that still leaves open the question of whether federal taxpayers should pay for it. And, even if that’s true, a project that Mississippi has been trying to get for so long shouldn’t be funded as Katrina relief, much less snuck into a war appropriations bill. It should stand, or fall, on its own merits. One characteristic of “pork” is that it avoids the normal budgetary scrutiny. That seems to be what Lott has been trying to do here.

Mississippi reader Lisa (last name withheld on request) writes:

If I did not know the local history of this project, I might think differently than I do. I just think it stinks to use the worst disaster in American history to get funding for a local pet project, when so many people are still so devastated.

I live on the Ms. Gulf Coast . . . Gulfport has wanted a new east west corridor for decades and could not come up with the money to fund it.

Relocating the CSX railroad and using the right of way for a new road will not take all of the traffic off of Hwy 90, the casino’s are located there.

So Hwy 90 will still be a vital road, you are just adding another road to be rebuilt in case of another Katrina.

And I could mention that the railroad acted as a dam preventing the devastating storm surge from going even further inland.

The project has enough merit that Gulfport has been looking into it for years. They have just come up with a clever way for you (the federal taxpayers) to pay for it.

Sounds like pork to me.

Me too.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Trent Lott isn’t giving up:

Mississippi’s two U.S. senators included $700 million in an emergency war spending bill to relocate a Gulf Coast rail line that has already been rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina at a cost of at least $250 million.

Republican Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, who have the backing of their state’s economic development agencies and tourism industry, say the CSX freight line must be moved to save it from the next hurricane and to protect Mississippi’s growing coastal population from rail accidents. But critics of the measure call it a gift to coastal developers and the casino industry that would be paid for with money carved out of tight Katrina relief funds and piggybacked onto funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It is ludicrous for the Senate to spend $700 million to destroy and relocate a rail line that is in perfect working order, particularly when it recently underwent a $250 million repair,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who is planning to challenge the funding when the $106.5 billion war spending bill reaches the Senate floor. “American taxpayers are generous and are happy to restore damaged property, but it is wrong for senators to turn this tragedy into a giveaway for economic developers.”

You can find a defense of Lott’s plan — which I don’t find terribly convincing, but your results may vary — here.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Newt Gingrich is warning Republicans about pork:

With the federal budget deficit at record levels, Gingrich said Americans are losing patience with “pork,” the discretionary spending earmarked to benefit local political constituencies.

“We were sent here to reform Washington, not to be co-opted by Washington,” he said.

Indeed. Meanwhile, in a battle of pork vs. the Navy, guess who wins? Trent Lott’s co-Senator, Thad Cochran (R-MS) is involved.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Apparently, the effort has gotten Trent Lott’s attention:

Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, the Republican from Mississippi, has had it to here with Porkbusters and other critics of pork barrel spending like Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, who think the federal government has better things to do with $700 million of the taxpayers money than tear up a just-repaired coastal rail line and replace it with a new highway.

Said Lott when asked by an AP reporter about criticism of the project he has long championed and which was just funded in a Senate Appropriations Committee bill to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as additional Hurricane Katrina relief:

“I’ll just say this about the so-called porkbusters. I’m getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina. We in Mississippi have not asked for more than we deserve. We’ve been very reasonable.”

The government just spent $300 million to repair the rail line that Lott and his fellow Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran want to tear up and replace with a highway to serve the heavily populated coastal region.

I guess he’s hearing from people he’d rather not. You know, the ones who don’t have their checkbooks out.

UPDATE: N.Z. Bear writes: “I’m sorry to say it, but we have just barely gotten started making the likes of Mr. Lott tired. So I hope he’s ready for many sleepless nights to come.”

Bill Quick: “Since when does anybody ‘deserve’ somebody else’s hard-earned money?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jane Meynardie emails: “It is my understanding, based on local press reports and town meetings discussing the recovery plan, that the government did not spend $300 million to repair the rail line. CSX spent that money from its insurance proceeds. The local government could not give CSX any quick assurance that it would be able to afford to buy out the right-of-way and, in the meantime, CSX wanted to serve its 2 customers along the existing line (reasonably enough).”

That’s not what the AP story says, but I suppose it’s possible that they’ve made a mistake.

TOM WOLFE SPOKE IN — AND TO — SAN FRANCISCO YESTERDAY: Ed Driscoll has a report:

The whole thing reminded me of the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk explains to a marooned Zefram Cochrane that there’s a whole, growing galaxy out there teaming with life that he can explore. Except that Wolfe was essentially telling an insular and emotionally walled-in left to go visit America for themselves.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Several readers note that Wolfe continues to plug James Webb’s new book. Yeah, I had noticed that. It seems to be selling quite well: it’s at #133 on Amazon.

KERRY THE “MOST LIBERAL SENATOR?” Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler thinks that the press is giving Republicans a free ride on this issue. He’s probably right about that — though he’d be more persuasive if he’d provide a list of senators that he thinks are to the left of Kerry.

UPDATE: A different take on the just how liberal is John Kerry question, from Stephen Bainbridge, who compares Kerry’s record with Paul Wellstone’s. “So if Kerry and Wellstone were so close in score, did that make Kerry a ‘Wellstone liberal’ or Wellstone a ‘Kerry liberal’? Either way, they were both pretty far out of the mainstream.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader John Kastellec rises to the challenge, sending this:

I’m taking up your challenge to see how many senators are more liberal than Kerry. The following are NOMINATE ratings compiled by Professor Keith Poole (available at Link, along with a description of how they are calculated). While the method use to calculate them is complicated, they are basically measures of liberalism-conservatism based on a Congressman’s entire career, not just on one Congress as the flawed National Journal ratings are. Because they incorporate all nonunaminous vote and are not biased by absention, NOMINATE scores are considered far superior to interest group ratings.

The scores range from -1 (most liberal) to 1 (most liberal). Below are ratings for all the senators of the 107th Congress (sorry for the poor formating), ranking from most liberal to most conservative. You can see that 15 Democrats are to the left of Kerry, which means that while he is by no means a conservative Democrat, he is not on the fringe of the party, and is clearly not the most liberal senator. Edwards, meannwhile, is well toward the moderate wing of the party, belying claims of his liberal extremism.

Click “more” for, er, more.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oliver Willis — earning his pay from David Brock — sends this link, and this one, too. Gosh, you’d think that being “liberal” was bad or something!

And I still think Oliver belongs on TV.

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