Pork

Via TPM, Molly Ivins states:

Silverstein reports on earmarks: ''In the past two decades, the pastime has become breathtaking in its profligacy. Even as the federal deficit soars to record heights, the sums of money being diverted from the treasury have grown ever larger. Last year, 15,584 separate earmarks worth a combined $32.7 billion were attached to the appropriations bills - more than twice the dollar amount in 2001 . . . and more than three times the dollar amount in 1998, when roughly 2,000 earmarks totaled $10.6 billion. The process is so willfully murky that abuse has become not the exception, but the rule.

Seems to me that there has been one party in control of that process virtually the entire time, too...