Gordon Adams, a long-time friend from the federal budgeting world, is one of this country's true experts on military spending and budgeting so when he talks, I listen.

One of Gordon's latest articles is a must-read given some of the ridiculousness passing for serious debate these days about Pentagon spending.  It's short and well worth your time.

I couldn't help myself this week.  The debate over earmarks has gotten so silly that I felt the need to devote my Roll Call column to debunking as many of the myths as I could.  If you have bought into any of this craziness...shame on you.

Earmark Debate Sounds Good, But It’s Mostly Nonsense

It turns out that the White House insistence that President Bush would stop the earmarks provided in the fiscal 2008 appropriations enacted last year from being spent is a total lie.

Some quick background.

Here's the earmark problem in a nutshell. 

Dean Baker had an interesting post yesterday in his blog about how best to determine whether earmarks have grown. It's Dean Baker in the best Dean Baker tradition, that is, insisting that numbers be put in context.

I know I'm beating a dead horse, but it's hard not to be impressed (or depressed, depending on your point of view) by the way earmarks and spending reductions are discussed in local communities.

Whenever the subject changes from the generic "earmarks" and the "need to reduce federal spending" to the specific dollars the locality either wants, likes, was expecting, is getting, etc., the discussion changes from how bad earmrks and overspending is to how wonderful the money is coming our way or how the decision will hurt this area.

John Fund's well-written piece in the today's Wall Street Journal online about earmarks overstates the case and misses the point.

Yes, President Bush has the ability not to spend many of the earmarks Republican and Democrats listed in the report accompanying the omnibus spending bill he signed in December, but doing so is likely to cause him political harm rather than establish the positive legacy Fund thinks will occur.

It's hard not to be impressed with a song, like "Rock and Roll is Here to Stay," which Danny and the Juniors made popular half a century ago,  that is still being sung.

It's also hard not to be impressed by how popular earmarks are in the local area where the money will be spent and how angry voters in those areas are when the money they were hoping would be appropriated isn't provided.

There are times that George W. Bush's audacity on budget matters is truly breathtaking.

The president last week said that Congress hadn't done enough to slow the growth of earmarks and had directed OMB Director Jim Nussle to consider ways not to spend the designated funds.

One of the great numbers from the 1978 Broadway musical The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas and the movie based on it was "Texas Has a Whorehouse In It," a supposed expose by a less-than-reputable newscaster about how he was absolutely shocked to discover a brothel that everyone knew knew was there.

f you saw the movie you'll almost certainly remember Dom DeLuise in this big production number with a chorus backing him up. It was outrageous, and outrageously funny.