“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”
– President Barack Obama, Inauguration, 1/20/09
Yup, not working (reformatted, emphasis mine):
A suspected meth lab exploded in a federal laboratory Saturday night, and now Congress wants to know why. Congress opened an investigation into the blast that occurred at a laboratory on the National Institute of Standards and Technology campus in Gaithersburg, Md., after initial reports that it was caused by a security guard manufacturing drugs.
Get that last part – by a security guard. Read on:
On Wednesday, Rep. Lamar Smith sent a formal letter to Penny Pritzker, secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees the NIST, demanding to know exactly what was going on. “If these initial reports are verified, the fact that this explosion took place at a taxpayer funded NIST facility potentially endangering NIST employees is of great concern,” Smith wrote in his letter.
Those would not have been my words – normally a very genteel and mild mannered guy, I would have had ALL KINDS of other words. Like HOW THE HECK DID YOU LET THIS HAPPEN?!?!?!?! “Great concern”…that’s a given – what about the root cause!
Smith, who oversees the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, the principal oversight committee for the NIST in Congress, said he wants a full briefing on the incident by next week and continual updates on a weekly basis thereafter. During the weekend explosion event, a large explosion ripped a blast shield right out of a wall in the NIST building. Police found pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in Sudafed, drain cleaner and a recipe for meth inside the building and, when they found the security guard, he had burns on his hands and arms.
The security guard was taken to a local hospital and treated for burns before being released Sunday morning. By Sunday night, he had resigned from his security guard job.
The NIST does a wide variety of testing and experiments, including measurement science. The campus where the explosion occurred is located about 15 miles north of Washington, D.C. As of Friday, the security guard had not been charged with any crimes.
Not charged – THAT’S “not working”.
(H/T: Daily Caller)
