Steven Barr has left the helm of the Washington Post’s "Federal Diary," a key daily tool in print and on the Web for federal employees and many who care about improving government service.  His successor is Joe Davidson, who today brings Post readers a look at his own plans and reports what priorities leaders around Washington see for the world’s largest corporation.  Making sure the workforce stays competitive — at entry as well as executive levels — and preparing the bureaucracy for the next presidential administration are at the top of the list.  Read Joe Davidson’s introductory column here.

Mother Nature, that is.  Given the EPA’s challenges, we can’t rely on it to do everything…and whatever you think about what Washington should be doing better, it’s a great thing when citizens step up to help their community.  Tina Kelley reports in the New York Times about Riverkeeper, an environmental non-profit that tests the water around New York City to see when — if ever — it will be safe for recreational use.  Riverkeeper’s project, called "Swimmable River," is building an online record of the Hudson’s toxin levels and safety for recreation.  Accessible information about real environmental problems?  Maybe the EPA could take a lesson from these folks.  Read Tina Kelley here. -NH

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are off tomatoes and onto jalapeno peppers as the possible source of a recent salmonella outbreak traced to Mexican restaurants, as Jane Zhang and Janet Adamy write in the Wall Street Journal.  Every day that they can’t find the answer is a day for critics of government to rehearse their usual refrains.  The easiest thing is to charge incompetence:  Why can’t those government people find the problem?  What is wrong with these people?  Business are losing money — everyone pities the tomato growers who have, it turns out, been "unfairly charged" and have lost "hundreds of millions of dollars."  But consider the alternative — what if the CDC was doing nothing? (more…)

The Taliban sheltered Al-Qaeda, and Al-Qaeda organized the massacres on 9/11.  Taliban forces are still strong in Afghanistan, and have taken over entire towns and significant regions.  Carlotta Gall of the New York Times reports that the U.S. Marines have successfully pushed back Taliban forces six miles from an Afghan town at the heart of the country’s breadbasket region.  Villagers and farmers are returning to the region.  Here we see the logic of having U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the reasons for their success.  View the connection by reading Carlotta Gall here.  EH

The Federal Aviation Administration is testing four new methods for finding foreign objects on airplane runways, Matthew Wald of the New York Times reports.  Debris and cast-off airplane parts can get sucked into jet engines during takeoff and landing, causing structural damage or even explosions, such as the explosion that obliterated an Air France Concorde jet in 2000, killing 109 people.  The proposed technologies are from companies in England, Israel, San Diego, CA and Singapore.  Read Wald here.  EH

The Food and Drug Administration yesterday announced the beginning of a new program called the Sentinel Initiative that will begin monitoring how medicines already in the marketplace are affecting people’s health.  As Gardiner Harris of the New York Times reports, the effort was accelerated after  widely-prescribed drugs like Vioxx were found to cause significant health problems.  Though encouraged, most experts believe it will be years before FDA can actually monitor side effects and potentially dangerous medicines effectively.  The agency will begin by testing drugs with recognized side effects, and then expand to watching new medicines.  Harris quotes a Harvard Medical School professor as saying that if the Sentinel Initiative succeeds, "the use of drugs and vaccines will be safer and better."  Read Harris here.  EH

It’s Public Service Recognition Week and the Council for Excellence in Government has kicked off the festivities with a survey about the federal bureaucracy. In a poll of 18-to-29-year-olds, apparently also known as millennials, the survey found out that if asked by a parent, teacher, or new president of the United States to work as a civil servant, millennials would actually be fairly interested.

But as the Washington Post’s Stephen Barr reports, 60 percent have never been asked. Survey respondents often equate serving the country with military service — not, say, making the Medicaid system more efficient, creating a new energy policy, or helping rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.  Read Barr here.  MB

Bruce Falconer of Mother Jones shows the intricacies of a recent Drug Enforcement Administration operation that ended in the arrest, by Thai police, of international weapons trafficker Viktor Bout.  Why was the DEA setting up an arms dealer?  Falconer notes that post-9/11 legislation gave DEA new powers to go after drug dealers overseas, and Bout, who "hated nothing so much as an empty cargo bay," often transported drugs in between weapons shipments.  The DEA recruited informants to act as representatives of the Columbian rebel group FARC, and Bout, who liked to seal deals in person, came to Bangkok personally to meet them.  Instead, he met 50 Thai police officers.  Read Falconer here.   EH

David Walker, the head of the Government Accountability Office, is stepping down this week.  Under Walker, the GAO has released authoritative reports on Iraq reconstruction, FEMА, the FDA, Homeland Security, and many more agencies.  Walker, the subject of a profile by Stephen Barr in the Washington Post, has made the GAO one of the most popular places to work in Washington.  Charles Peters points out in a recent issue of the Washington Monthly that with less than a year to go in the Bush Administration, Congress shouldn’t hurry to replace him.  He says:  "Do not — I repeat, do not — confirm a Bush appointee to replace David Walker . . . the GAO plays a crucial role as a watchdog for government agencies [and the head of GAO] has an unusual tenure of fifteen years."

The Wall-Street Journal’s Joseph Pereira presents a refreshing profile of one person fighting for truth, justice, and the American consumer:  retired Consumer Product Safety Commission official Martin Bennett. Bennett spent four decades as a compliance officer at CPSC where he says he succeeded in helping to recall more than 500 products. Now he lives in Brooklyn where he relentlessly conducts product safety inspections on his own recognizance.  Bennett is setting an example for his old employer as it contemplates new funding and regulatory powers.  Pereira accompanied volunteer product inspector Bennett on one expedition where the “69-year old sleuth” at a glance picked out five lead-tainted toys on store shelves. To see how one person can make a difference . . . read Pereira here.