Beltway waste

Apparently, you can fight City Hall -- and even the Beltway Bureaucracy.

Just ask Brian Rainville, whose family owns a dairy farm in northern Vermont near the Canadian border.

Seems when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was doling out the pork last year, it decided to lavish a few million dollars on a small border checkpoint in Franklin -- which handles about 2.5 vehicles per hour.

The underworked customs agents "sometimes get so bored waiting for business that they hit golf balls or shoot skeet out back," The Associated Press reports.

In order to push forward with a $5 million expansion of the port of entry, the federal government wanted to seize a 2.2 acre parcel from the Rainville dairy farm, offering a $40,000 settlement. When the family balked, Homeland Security bureaucrats moved forward through eminent domain.

After dozens of people packed a public hearing in opposition last month, protesting the plan as a waste of money and an abuse of eminent domain, Washington backed down and agreed to close the tiny checkpoint instead.

"It makes good sense," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. "It was too much for too little."

Finally, some common sense from Washington. Now, about that $300,000 earmarked to study Minnesota grain, or the $254,000 grant to the Montana Sheep Institute, or the ...