Weather Warning.

This year's winner in the "Washington Monument syndrome" sweepstakes is the National Weather Service. (For those unfamiliar with the syndrome, its symptoms involve issuing dire warnings--such as, "We'll have to close the Washington Monument"--to ward off cuts or less-than-desired increases in an agency's budget.) Just as Congress prepares to take up the Weather Service's fiscal 2006 budget, an employee organization has conveniently leaked an internal memo saying that due to last year's cuts at the organization, "warning lead times will shorten and tornado detection rates will decrease (as will most other NWS performance standards) leading to the troubling and tragic conclusion that there will be unwarranted loss of life."