NASA’s 2009 budget is $17.6 billion to continue exploring the solar system, building the International Space Station, studying Earth from space and conducting aeronautics research.

That's enough to buy us a couple of month's worth of Shock and Awe and there's got to be some defenseless third world rat-hole who deserves it, Zimbabwe? Venezuela?

It's the only kind of government spending conservatives approve of.

Stealth destroyer:

Two weeks ago, the Navy canceled plans to build the rest of its hulking stealth destroyers. At first, it looked like the DDG-1000s' $5-billion-a-copy price tag was to blame. Now, it appears the real reason has slipped out: The Navy's most advanced warship is all but defenseless against one of its best-known threats.

Data mining:

But the authors conclude the type of data mining that government bureaucrats would like to do–perhaps inspired by watching too many episodes of the Fox series 24–can't work. “If it were possible to automatically find the digital tracks of terrorists and automatically monitor only the communications of terrorists, public policy choices in this domain would be much simpler. But it is not possible to do so.”

Nasa budget 2009: NASA Unveils $17.6 Billion Budget

According to FAS, the stealth destoyer is dead in the water.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL32109.pdf

As can be seen in the table, when the $1.1 billion in FY1995-FY2001 research
and development costs are included, the DD-21/DD(X)/DDG-1000 program received
a total of about $13,385 million in funding from FY1995 through FY2008. This total
includes about $6,911 million in research and development funding, and about
$6,474 million in procurement funding.

The US uses around 40% of it's taxes on the military, but when trillions go missing at the Defense Department who is calling out for scalps? Improving government accountability requires focusing on real issues of importance, not symbolic hackery that leaves our space program in shambles while China and India make rapid progress.