Chuck Norton said:

> ... the ARS battle is not over.

While, it does seem that one or more bee labs are threatened every few
years on one pretext or another, the current battle appears to be "over".

On Thu, Feb 20, the President signed the "Omnibus Spending Bill",
and this (apparently) funded the Bee Labs at their 2002 levels, just
as the USDA budget did.  Like all the other budget bills, it was
replaced by the Omnibus Spending Bill.

The only specific supporting evidence I can offer is a Washington Post
article, which, predictably, lists Bee Lab funding as "pork".

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18257-2003Feb16.html

        "From Hill With Love, A Platter of Bacon"

        "...$2 million for a Beltsville lab for honey bees..."

In fact, bee research will only be accurately described as "pork" when pigs fly.  :)

This little skirmish may be won, but the "war" will not be "over" until the term
"bee lab(s)" is consistently replaced by a reference to a specific research
>>activity<<,  such as "diseases and pests", "improved breeds", "genetics",
"management", and so on.  The basic problem is that "lab" means a building
or facility, and buildings have a habit of being named for congressmen.

This is a very bad idea, since egos create situations where some names are
no longer "popular", and/or no one wants to "fund" something with someone
else's name on it.

                jim

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