Free Republic

Perhaps you caught the story that the National Institutes of Health sponsored a project to study the size of gay men’s packages. That might be the most egregious of the bizarre NIH funding examples turned up by a recent budget review conducted by the Traditional Values Coalition — but it’s by no means the only one.TVC reports millions of dollars have gone to projects that can only be described as obvious. Since 2008, for example, $472,286 went to a project to study noise exposure on the New York City subway (yep, it’s noisy!). More than $360,000 contributed to a study...

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - California's vast San Joaquin Valley has long been compared to the nation's Appalachian region for its levels of poverty, unemployment and lack of public funding for roads, schools and health care. In fact, according to preliminary data from a congressional report released Tuesday, the valley suffered from a higher poverty rate in 2000 than the Appalachian region - 20.5 percent compared to 13.6 percent - yet received 21 percent less federal money per capita. It's a contradiction valley congressional members say needs to be reconciled. "We, I think, have always felt for many years that the...