The problem with trying to parody runaway federal bureaucracies is that reality always catches up with your imagination and attempts to surpass it:

A May 7th solicitation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks “the commercial acquisition of submachine guns [in] .40 Cal. S&W.” According to the solicitation, the Dept. of Agriculture wants the guns to have an “ambidextrous safety, semiautomatic or 2 round [bursts] trigger group, Tritium night sights front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore group) and scope (top rear), stock collapsible or folding,” and a “30 rd. capacity” magazine.

In my novel, the Department of Agriculture’s Agency of Invasive Species does opportunistically emphasize its centrality to the Reagan administration’s Cold War defense policy and then later to the need for post-9/11 crop security and terrorist threats to agriculture.

But I never thought of having the USDA employees running around with submachine guns. It could have been an action thriller!