"Spinach might not seem to have anything to do with military operations. But there it is, in an emergency supplemental bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: $25 million for California spinach growers.

The war bill illustrates the axiom that guides the nation's agricultural policy: namely, that any principles of good government, common sense and fiscal sanity must always be abandoned in the cause of shoveling federal dollars at American farmers. Its $4 billion for disaster relief, together with millions for peanut storage, sugar-beet production and the Milk Income Loss Contract Program, isn't unusual, except for the fact that it was used to buy votes for a pullout from Iraq. For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, apparently, all geopolitics is local, and some of her members are happy to lose a war if they can win a subsidy."

From the commentary "

Fighting for Subsidies

" by Rich Lowry.