PUBLIC MARKS with tags government & pork

Recently, the White House announced that this year’s federal budget deficit would be $296 billion. Believe it or not, that was taken as good news: Earlier projections had pegged the deficit as high as $425 billion. Next year, the deficit is predicted to rise to $339 billion. If we continue this way, we will be guilty of, in George Washington’s words, “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden of which we ourselves ought to bear.”

A multi-million dollar restoration project will expend $24,000 to reconstruct a "historic toilet" on the first floor of a 1912 courthouse, authorities said.