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They could get a good idea by looking at just a sample of current earmarks secured by task force members. Cochran: $475,000 for beaver management in Mississippi. Lugar: $240,000 to rehabilitate...

Novak mocks those who ask for a definition, but a definition is absolutely necessary. To just blast all earmarks as "bad" is shortsighted, IMO.

Here is another view on earmarks, from an interview with Duncan Hunter last year:

John Hawkins: [so you support] Banning earmarks.
Duncan Hunter: No. The Constitution gives to Congress the charge to build the defense budget. As you know, I'm the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. The entire budget and the idea that we're no longer supposed to build the entire budget, we're supposed to accept as sacrosanct the budget comes over from a political process in the Pentagon, number one, goes against the Constitution and abandons our Constitutional responsibility.
Number Two, it takes away the judgment of members who have been examining defense issues literally for dozens of years. The average experience level on my Armed Services Committee is in excess of ten years. The average budget person who's working in the Pentagon has been there for about a year and a half.
Let me give you some examples of things that I have added to the budget; in fact, I publish mine on the internet. I call them congressional initiatives because I think that earmark is a pejorative term. I put in an additional 10 million dollars for jammers to defeat road-side bombs, portable jammers. The Pentagon didn't have any jammers that could be carried by infantrymen. That meant they had nothing for the troops. I put in 10 million dollars and we built and deployed jammers for our dismounted troops within 70 days. We did 10,000 of them in 70 days. Armored vests, additional humvees, a ship, the X-Craft which goes 60 miles an hour, which is manned by a crew of only 26 people, which is truly transformational of the US Navy, and which has been given glowing marks by former Secretaries of the Navy - that was added. Let me give you other things that have been added by Congress - an aircraft carrier when Jimmy Carter didn't want to put it in the budget, the B-1 bomber and the President didn't want to put it in the budget, so the point is that Congress is supposed to, and is charged, and the Constitution says Congress shall provide for the Navies, the equipping of the Navies, the Army, and by implication, the Air Force. It's our Constitutional duty...