The Spider Sense Was Tingling

I was listening to the local "All news, all the time- except when the Yankees are playing" station and I heard this ad. The following lines really caught my attention:

The bridge to nowhere was a drop in the bucket. Today, Washington is spending millions on special interest projects like tunnels for turtles and digging for fossils in other countries.

Now, being a conservation-minded, nerdy science type guy, I am for tunnels for turtles and fossil digs in other countries. Turtle tunnels help to slow the decline of turtle populations, giving this ancient tetrapod lineage a shot to survive the Anthropozoic Era (and who the hell would want their kids to grow up in a world without turtles?). Digging for fossils in foreign lands has yielded incredible advances in scientific knowledge. The "bridge to nowhere" was a proposed project to benefit a handful of wealthy, politically connected landowners.

By downplaying the odiousness of the GOP-sponsored project, and making the "liberal backed" projects (which would actually produce beneficial results for humankind) seem like wasteful excess, the Public Notice group behind the "nonpartisan" Bankrupting America tip their hand. Looking into Public Notice, I found that executive director Gretchen Hamel was Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) for Public and Media Affairs for the Bush Administration. Nonpartisan, my ass.

Heard the ad and started retchin'.
Poked around and I found Gretchen.

Seems I'm woefully late to the party, the good people of TPM were covering this months ago.