The steroids-in-baseball thing is a different matter, because the government favors the industry--we suspended a few of our anti-trust laws so that anybody with a little money or enough charm to gather a few investors can't throw a team together until we have one per ZIP code. So if we're going to be helping them out, we get a little oversight.

However, the big thing involved is that these projects cost money, and somebody's asking for them. Al Edwards may indeed be an idiot, but come re-election, there are going to be a lot of wierd folks with an axe to grind and bitter women who didn't make the cheerleading squad when they were in high school remembering that this guy gave them (or tried to give them) what they want--and if someday it passes then there are going to be folks on whatever task force is put together to oversee this that are going to remember they owe a government job (which, in most instances is horridly easy and disgustingly overpaid--there's a reason folks used to refer to government employment as "Irish Welfare") to Mr. Edwards. You get enough projects like that goin' and you're guaranteed to be back in congress next term.

It's a huge problem, and pork-barrel spending is where most of the government's wasted money and unauthorized power goes to and comes from respectively. And it'll continue until we get rid of this "living Constitution" crap and read the thing instead of "interpreting" it to grant people rights that never existed and the government the power to see to them.