Speaking of bureaucracy, the Washington Nationals baseball team is trying to find enough parking space for fans coming to its new stadium.  It looked into the possibility of using an empty federal garage nearby.  The team’s owners got the city to pay for the stadium; now they want to get the government to provide parking.  So it is difficult to have any sympathy for their problem.  Still, here is the list of agencies that, according to the Washington Post’s Marc Fisher, must grant permission for the use of the garage:  the Federal Protectors Service; the Department of Justice; the General Services Administration; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; and five different offices of the Department of Transportation. 

And since part of the document that Fisher relied on for this story was redacted "to protect national security," it seems likely that intelligence agencies were also involved.

[excerpted from The Washington Monthly.  Used by permission.]

The chances that urban hospitals can deal with a terrorist attack or natural catastrophe are bad and may be getting worse. Congress’s House oversight committee released a report yesterday that hospitals in the seven cities arguably most vulnerable to an attack have shortages in emergency room capacity.  The lack of intensive care beds and hospital personnel is especially problematic in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. 

Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) charges that the problem will grow, because the Dept. of Health Human Services is slashing Medicaid programs. The Washington Post’s Spencer S. Hsu and Mary Beth Sheridan report that Dept. intends to cut $17.8 billion over the next five years in money for public hospitals.  Read Hsu and Beth Sheridan here.  MB

The FAA has allowed airlines to skip more than 100 reviews of fundamental safety systems that must be conducted at least once every five years.  Christopher Conkey and Andy Pasztor report in the Wall Street Journal that it’s not just Southwest Airlines that missed its inspections, but in fact "seven other major carriers" including American Airlines and US Airways with 30 missed reviews.   Some of the safety tests have not been conducted for as long as nine years.  But not to worry:  to combat what FAA administrator Robert Sturgell called "inadequate resources" for these inspections, the FAA has come up with a "new tool" that will tell them when five-year inspections are overdue.  How about a simple alarm clock?  Read Conkey and Pasztor here.  EH

Of the 775 terrorist suspects detained by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay, not one has been tried for a crime. The Washington Post’s Josh White reports that this trend will likely persist a “year or longer.”  It has already been going on for seven.

Army prosecutors were hoping to use military commissions on six detainees allegedly involved in the 9/11 attacks by the end of the Bush administration. One Pentagon official noted the “strategic political value” of such trials. But the reliance on a separate brand of justice—the military commissions set up by Congress and the president in the fall of 2006—has led to legal questions every step of the way.  Read White here.  MB

The normally somnolent Federal Trade Commission has decided to scrutinize the price of oil. Typically, looking at the supply and price of oil often imported from OPEC nations is the job of the Commodities Future Trading Commission. 

But as the Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Hughes reports, the energy bill that passed Congress in December granted the FTC the power to investigate oil-trading markets. Moreover, the commission might feel compelled to act with Congress ratcheting up its scrutiny of OPEC nations.  Read Hughes here.  MB