GOOD NEWS FROM THE HOUSE

House to Bush: No new nukes!

A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee defied the Bush administration on Wednesday and slashed funds to study a new generation of deep-earth penetrating nuclear weapons and so-called low-yield nuclear weapons.

The House Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee denied the $36 million the administration sought to study the nuclear weapons it says may be needed to confront emerging threats since the end of the Cold War.

It took the measure while considering a $28 billion bill to fund energy, water and nuclear weapons programs.

The subcommittee also cut the funds last year, but the full Congress in later House and Senate votes restored them.

Let's hope they get it out and keep it out this time. And as for the administration?

The administration has said it has no plans to develop the weapons. But it does not want to close the door to the "bunker-busting'' nuclear weapons it said may be needed to bore into underground facilities and the smaller weapons with less than half the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

So the administration wants to develop nuclear warheads with "less than half the yield" of a bomb that caused around 200,000 deaths, 70,000 of them pretty much instantly. That's, um, mighty encouraging.

And after the media telling us over and over again this week that Reagan ended the Cold War, at that!

"Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!"