Can you guess which disaster this Washington Post article is about? In a stinging, wide-ranging assessment of..efforts, .... said that...had no strategy for restoring either government institutions or infrastructure. And in the years since, other agencies joined the effort without an overall plan and without a structure in place to organize and execute a task of such magnitude. Lines of authority remained unclear in the...effort. With a demand for speed and a shortage of government personnel, much of the oversight was turned over to the contractors doing the work. There was little coordination among the various agencies. The result was a series of missed opportunities to address the unraveling situation.... A. Hurricane Katrina. B. The Iraq war reconstruction C. The Afghanistan war D. It's an article from the future- it's about how they'll handle the next disaster.

Freshman House Member Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has let a New York Times reporter in on the process and pitfalls of selecting pet projects in her district for earmark approrpriations. The view from what the reporter calls "a rare spectator's seat" is described in an article appearing in today's Times. An open and transparent process becomes all the more important, as congressional appropriations for local projects rise:

The House is heading for a floor vote, probably late this Thursday, March 22, on the now-$124.1 billion supplemental appropriations package -- the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Health, and Iraq Accountability Act. At this point, it is seen as a vehicle for a Democratic message regarding withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq as much as a spending bill providing a record $100 billion in supplemental war funds. As the time draws nigh, we thought these resources would be helpful:

• Where the Vote Count Stands in the House: Iraq vote hangs by thread

According to Congressional Quarterly ($), Senate Finance Committee ranking member Charles Grassley (R-IA) has dropped his earlier insistence on pre-conferencing the differences between the House ($1.3 billion) and the Senate ($8.3 billion) minimum wage bill small business tax cuts. Grassley and Committee chair Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) apparently plan to offer an amendment to the supplemental appropriations bill on the Senate floor that would pull the Senate-passed wage measure from the supplemental and push it into a conference with the House. (Robert Novak missed this one, by the way.)