It's the most wonderful time of the year — and I don't mean Christmas.

It's the time when Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) releases its annual "Congressional Pig Book Summary," exposing some of the most outrageous, ridiculous and in many cases unconstitutional spending one can imagine. I guarantee you won't be able to imagine most of it. Why should you, when it's not their money they are spending and borrowing, which has driven the debt to unprecedented and dangerous levels?

According to CAGW, the number of earmarks, which is spending that avoids going through the normal appropriations process, "totaled 140,826, costing $484 billion." Republicans used to be against earmarks before they became for them. After an 11-year moratorium, Republicans re-joined Democrats at the trough.

For fun - and for quality and training purposes — let's just pick a few examples from the first section: "$9,650,000 for two earmarks for the Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center funding equipment and infrastructure modernization and facility repairs and improvements by Senate Appropriations........

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