The American Spectator

Washington Prowler

p> POP GOES THE WEASEL br> Rep. Henry Waxman has been railing at the Bush administration for months, criticizing its war on terrorism, its lack of information sharing with Congress, the economy. So it shouldn't come as surprise that Waxman is doing his part to keep people working. Unfortunately for the American people, the jobs that he's creating are all at the General Accounting Office. /p>

While the number and nature of requests that a congressman makes of the GAO are considered confidential, often times congressmen openly share their requests because it makes them like as if they were actually doing something. Waxman, though, isn't one of those. Nonetheless, every once in a while one of Waxman's wild-eyed conspiracy theory-based requests gets out.

For example, several weeks ago Waxman asked GAO investigators to give him a full report on the effect that toy guns have on children. Yes, toy guns. Precisely, Waxman wanted to know how many deaths each year result from toy guns.

"He's always sending these kinds of things over here," says a GAO staffer. "He's kind of become a one-man GAO project manager. We think that if he had his way, he'd have us all working for him. Actually, given the number of requests he makes to us, we probably do."

Waxman, according to the staffer, currently has at least 25 requests pending with the GAO. Most of them deal with various Bush administration actions -- or perceived actions in Waxman's mind -- that Waxman believes could potentially embarrass the administration once the reports were released.

p> CLOUDY SUNSHINE br> Almost every political pundit in Washington acknowledges that Republicans are poised to solidify their Senate control in 2004, if certain political realities take shape. Two of those realities lie down south in South Carolina and Florida, where the decisions made by Sens. Fritz Hollings and

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