---| From the Editor |--------------------------------------

    Last year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) proposed an
    amendment that would criminalize war profiteering. The
    Republican leadership not only removed it, but raised
    the limit on no-bid contracts from $7.5 million to $200
    million. At home, pork spending has enjoyed a stunning
    renaissance, from the creation of a $225 million African
    rainforest in Iowa, to a subsidy, procured by Rep. Billy
    Tauzin (R-La.), to help build a Hooters restaurant. Tom
    Delay, meanwhile, browbeat a D.C. restaurant manager to
    let him smoke a cigar at his table. Told that federal
    this would be against the law of the federal government,
    DeLay thundered back, "I am the federal government!"
    The 108th Congress, writes Jack Hitt, has been one of
    the most profligate - and least principled - in nearly a
    century. No shortage of candidates, then, for this year's
    Diddly Awards, Mother Jones' tribute to the most
    pork-happy, prejudiced, and pigheaded members of Congress.
    Writes Hitt, "[E]ven as they have scoffed at the rules the
    rest of us plebs must live by and spent like drunken
    sailors," members of the 108th Congress "still found myriad
    opportunities to, once again, do diddly."
   
See >http://ga3.org/ct/Z1affE61iaGn/

    Julian Brookes
    Assistant Editor, MotherJones.com