Six weeks after a fatal Minneapolis bridge collapse prompted criticism of federal spending priorities, the Senate approved a transportation and housing bill Wednesday containing at least $2 billion for pet projects that include a North Dakota peace garden, a Montana baseball stadium and a Las Vegas history museum reports USA Today.

Total spending on transportation "earmarks" next year is likely to be about $8 billion, when legislative projects from a previously approved, five-year highway bill are factored in. A newly released report by the Department of Transportation's inspector general identified 8,056 earmarks totaling $8.5 billion in the fiscal year that ended in October, or 13.5% of the Transportation Department's $63 billion spending plan.

The inspector general's report found that the vast majority of earmarks -- project-specific spending instructions written into bills, usually by lawmakers -- were not evaluated on their merits, and that many "low-priority" earmarks often squeezed out more important projects.

But what museum? We have a Las Vegas Museum, a Natural History Museum, a Neon Museum, a Las Vegas Art Museum, a Liberace Museum, an Elvis Museum, a Guggenheim Hermitage Museum at the Venetian or is this for the famed Mob Museum Oscar Goodman supports--although the mob doesn't exist!

On Yahoo News: The FBI and IRS have searched the home of Republican Sen. Ted Stevens in a ski resort in Alaska as part of an investigation into his links with an oil-services company

Stevens is the subject of a grand-jury investigation into his links with managers of VECO Corp., the state's largest oil-services company, as well as numerous unrelated fisheries matters.

In May, Bill Allen, then the chief executive of VECO, along with a vice president, Rick Smith, pleaded guilty to several federal corruption charges.

The Democratic-controlled House passed legislation Friday that combines billions in aid to farmers with funds for low-income nutrition programs, defying a veto threat from President Bush over the bill's largesse to crop producers.

The measure, which was passed on a 231-191 vote, devotes more money to conservation, renewable energy, nutrition and specialty crop programs than in the past but leaves in place -- and in some cases increases -- subsidies to producers of major crops such as corn and soybeans at a time of record-high prices.

It reflected a delicate straddle for Democrats writing their first farm bill in a decade, who struggled to balance the needs of first-term, farm-state lawmakers against the demands of liberals seeking more money for environmental and nutrition programs.

It is a "delicate straddle" for Democrats to claim fiscal responsibility and the end of pork and then create a farm subsidy bill to benefit recent Democrat winners in Congress at a time when farmers are seeing record prices for grain. Can you say hypocrisy?