FedTimes on appropriations... Capitol Hill watchers caution agency leaders to expect more hearings, more scrutiny, less predictability and longer wait times for their 2008 budgets. "The one thing that is clear is that departments and agencies are going to be held much more accountable and forced to disclose a lot of information that they haven't previously disclosed, and they are going to be punished if they don't disclose," said Scott Lilly, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress.

An AP story this morning, Democrats not backing down on Iraq, not only flatly contradicts yesterday's Washington Post front-page headline, which drew a blog swat from us. It also details the short-term, "a la carte" approaches now under consideration by various House leaders. Under another a la catre plan, military functions would get funds identified as money for "troops," through Sept. 30. But it would guarantee other funding, generally described as "combat" functions, for only two months and create a mechanism for fencing off funding for those operations beyond mid-July.

Rick Perlstein over at the Campaign for America's Future is keeping a watchful eye on a growing epidemic of sinkholes opening up all over the country. Decaying water and sewer pipes are to blame. Yes, sinkholes. Yes, in America. Yes, it's weird and gross. Perlstein also makes the connection to the anti-tax movement, in the sense that a smaller tax base has diminished the capacity of government to respond to public needs, like having level ground that doesn't cave in.

As expected, the House bid to override President Bush's veto of the war spending supplemental bill failed in a 222-203 vote this afternoon, well short of the short of the two-thirds needed to override the veto.