scam

One of the old giants of American physics Harold (Hal) Lewis, professor at Princeton, Berkeley, Bell Labs, and Uni Cal Santa Barbara has finally resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) after protracted efforts to get them to appoint a panel to reconsider alarmist pronouncements on global warming. He says the premier professional associations of American physicists has been corrupted by government grants and zealotry.

The Wall Street Journal has been splendid in lambasting the SEC and other regulators for their failure to investigate the huge Madoff Ponzi fraud before Bernie Madoff himself confessed the game was up last December. The regulators repeatedly received detailed analysis making the case for grand fraud, and ignored it.

The Washington Post reports (Apr 23) that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well among the bureaucrats of Washington DC, even at the IRS. They've been trading transit vouchers like crazy - to the tune of at least $17m, probably much higher according to the Government Accountability Office GAO).