Distractions at the NSF

I really don't know what to say. From Stop the ACLU and the Washington Times:

Employee misconduct investigations, often involving workers accessing p0rnography from their government computers, grew sixfold last year inside the taxpayer-funded foundation that doles out billions of dollars of scientific research grants, according to budget documents and other records obtained by The Washington Times.

But in some cases it wasn't so much sleazy exploitation of women and girls as it was . . . philanthropy! Yeah, that's it!

For instance, one senior executive spent at least 331 days looking at p0rnography on his government computer and chatting online with nude or partially clad women without being detected, the records show.

When finally caught, the NSF official retired. He even offered, among other explanations, a humanitarian defense, suggesting that he frequented the p0rn sites to provide a living to the poor overseas women. Investigators put the cost to taxpayers of the senior official’s p0rn surfing at between $13,800 and about $58,000.

“He explained that these young women are from poor countries and need to make money to help their parents and this site helps them do that,” investigators wrote in a memo.

Go to STACLU for some pithy commentary on this guy, who ought to be in jail.

Another employee in a different case was caught with hundreds of pictures, videos and even PowerPoint slide shows containing p0rnography. Asked by an investigator whether he had completed any government work on a day when a significant amount of p0rnography was downloaded, the employee responded, "Um, I can't remember," according to records.

The employee also said that friends sent him the p0rnographic files, that he never planned on viewing them and that he never got around to deleting the files, a claim one official later called "simply not believable."

Can we just dump the whole federal government and start over?

Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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