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Even the federal government can only spend so much on a project that’s never worked. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that after three and a half years and $1.4 billion, she is freezing funding for the virtual border fence in Arizona

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Virtual Fence Virtually Dead

As I noted yesterday , Congressional Democrats hoping to pass a health care reform bill seem to be hitting snags with the Congressional Budget Office. Their problem isn’t the Senate bill, which is already set, but the language in the reconciliation legislation that would amend the Senate bill: As this helpful piece in the Post explains, reconciliation bills have special budgetary requirements that may be difficult to meet given the Democrats’ other goals: Because Democrats are using special budget rules, known as reconciliation, to protect the package from a Republican filibuster, the measure must reduce the deficit by at least $2 billion over the next five years and avoid increasing the deficit in any year thereafter. Under normal circumstances, that rule would require the bill simply to contain enough revenue-raising provisions to offset new spending.

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CBO Not As Easy As ABC, 1-2-3

State prison populations decline for first time in 40 years. The gay terrorist who could have prevented 9/11. Thieves take $75 million in pharmaceuticals from Eli Lilly warehouse.

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Reason Morning Links: State Prison Populations Drop, the Gay Terrorist, Federalism Reborn

Federal investigators are lucky that a judge rejected U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien’s claim that violating a website’s terms of service constitutes unauthorized computer access under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

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Feds’ Online Snooping Reveals Evidence of Crimes, Possibly Including Their Own

According to Congressional Quarterly , it looks like there’s a good chance that health care reform may be being held up by inconvenient scoring from the Congressional Budget Office. As it stands, the final text of the reconciliation bill—which would amend the Senate health reform bill—has yet to be released. Seems the reason why may be that the CBO is saying that the changes House Democrats want to make would cost too much

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C-B-Oh No! Budget Office Holds Up Health Reform?

While insurers may be having second thoughts about President Obama’s health care plan, Politico reports that drug manufacturers like what they see emerging from Congress enough to start planning commercials urging legislators to vote for it: The drug industry, which has held off running ads until officials sign off on the final reconciliation bill, is growing more comfortable with the emerging legislation and is preparing a substantial pro-reform ad buy in 43 Democratic districts, according to a senior industry source. The amount and timing of the buy have not yet been set and hinge largely on action in the House

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Drug Pushers for Health Care Reform

Today’s installment of Reason Saves Cleveland With Drew Carey counsels The Mistake on the Lake and other cities to ” Privatize It ,” to sell off certain publicly owned assets and get out of the business of others altogether. Or to contract out in a competitive bidding process that, if done properly, should lower costs while improving services

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Open Thread: What Municipal Services Should Be Privatized? Contracted Out? Kept in The Public Sector?

The Post ’s headline —”House may try to pass Senate health care bill without voting on it”—tells you all you really need to know about the what of House Democrats’ procedural strategy via the Slaughter Rule (which I explained in greater detail here ). But it doesn’t tell you much about the why .  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi explains that she “like[s] it because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.” And presumably that’s what anxious legislators who might want to vote for reform but don’t like the Senate bill are thinking too.

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Pelosi on Democrats’ Likely Health Care Procedure: “I like it because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.”

NPR recently ran a three-part series about the “House of Death,” in which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents refused to close an investigation into a drug operation despite becoming aware of and having the capacity to prevent a number of gruesome murders, some of which were aided by one of their informants, who went by the name of “Lalo.” (Prior Reason coverage of the story here .) I reported last March that the federal government has been trying to deport Lalo back to Mexico, despite knowing that he’ll almost certainly be killed

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NPR on the “House of Death”