Maybe I can get a government grant!

Mining lists of grants awarded by the custodians of the taxpayers' money in Washington is always good for amusement, if you don't mind laughing at your own expense. Even better is when the pork barrel legislators with a professional interest in promoting government largesse pipe up to defend the practice. So here's a smile from Greg Pierce in the Washington Times:

It's "scientific McCarthyism," an attempt to impose a "right-wing ideological agenda," says Rep. Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat.

Sigh. Why is nacelle nostrils so upset this time?

Mr. Waxman is upset about a list of more than 250 research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Republican congressional staffers sent the list to NIH officials after an Oct. 2 Capitol Hill hearing in which the propriety of some of the grants was questioned.

In a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, Mr. Waxman says the "hit list" sends "a clear message to scientists ... that the Bush administration is prepared to attack leading researchers and sacrifice scientific integrity at NIH to further a narrow right-wing ideological agenda."

Mr. Waxman says the list looks like "an inside job," adding: "Officials within HHS itself appear to have been directly involved in the creation of this list."

Dang, it' must be that pesky VRWC again!

Wrong, says Andrea Lafferty.

"The research is my research, mine and my staff," says Mrs. Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition. "We began collecting the information [on the list] under the Clinton administration ... and worked on it for months and months."

The list represents "almost $100 million of NIH grants that we wanted looked into," Mrs. Lafferty says, "such as studying the sex habits of illegal immigrants ... [and] prostitutes that hang out at truck stops." She calls NIH "a bureaucracy run amok."

As for charges of an "inside job" at HHS, Mrs. Lafferty says: "Maybe Henry Waxman ought to learn how to use the Internet, since Al Gore invented it."

Even after the flap, you apparently still have to dig around local papers to discover the grant topics. Here are some from San Francisco:

Among the other UCSF researchers named on the list are Nancy Padian, whose project is studying sexually transmitted diseases within groups of Latino youth in San Francisco's Mission District; William Woods, who is studying HIV risk in bath houses and sex clubs; and Ruth Malone, who is studying the tobacco industry's targeting of gays and lesbians.

The concern for possible funding loss is based in precedent. In July, Congress fell two votes shy of passing an amendment that would have stripped funding of a continuing study of HIV among Asian prostitutes in San Francisco massage parlors.

HIV risk in bath houses and sex clubs! Tobacco industry targeting of gays and lesbians! Who knew?

Hmm, I wonder if they would toss me a few bucks for Kylie Minogue studies?