In case you haven’t noticed, there haven’t been any posts here in several days. This is primarily because I’ve been wrapped up with another project which has taken up virtually all of my time since the last post. To make it up to you, I’m just going to give you links to several interesting items in my unread list for you to enjoy.

On a regular day, some of this stuff would have made it into a post, and some of it would not. Much of it would have made it into a post like this anyway, if I hadn’t stopped doing them.

The Project on Government Oversight notes that the Federal Bureau of Investigation desperately needs to be watched from outside, or it will misbehave. This, of course, is not news, but what’s interesting is that the FBI has a policy of actively resisting any sort of outside audit, put in place by former director Louis Freeh. “Ironically, in 1997, it was Freeh who called the FBI ‘potentially the most dangerous agency in the country’ if it is ‘not scrutinized carefully,’” POGO’s Nick Schwellenbach writes. “Freeh also called for more congressional oversight.”

In Boston, the state is trying to shut down a lawsuit brought by the family of Milena Del Valle, who was killed last July when 12 tons of Boston’s Big Dig tunnel fell on her husband’s car. The excuse they’ve given this time is that if they turn over relevant documents to the family, the nation’s transportation security could be compromised. By discovering exactly what shortcuts they took in building the thing and where it’s likely to kill someone next? (I’ve survived two trips through the Big Dig and I hope never to be caught down there again, especially with the state continuing its cover-up of just how shoddy a job the Big Dig really was.)

And down in New Orleans, the police aren’t paid enough to prevent them from leaving their jobs or becoming corrupt, according to a study (PDF) published last week by the RAND Corporation. Worse, the police aren’t receiving pay raises for promotions that they have earned, the report said. No word on where the city will find all the money it will need to slow this “exodus of officers that began after Hurricane Katrina hit the city.”

The man nominated to be the next undersecretary of defense for intelligence told his Senate confirmation committee last week that he would consider shutting down the Threat and Local Observation Notice military intelligence database because it might not be worth all the controversy. In 2005, the database came to public attention when anti-war protests and other peaceful First Amendment protected activities were found in the database. Last November a Homeland Stupidity special report revealed that the Department of Homeland Security had placed the inappropriate protests in the database by forwarding their intelligence reports on the peaceful activities to the military. (Homeland Security, though, is still watching the peaceful protesters.)

Finally, Bruce Schneier’s first Movie Plot Threat Contest went over so well that he’s doing it again this year. Yesterday he announced his Second Annual Movie Plot Threat Contest. “Your goal: invent a terrorist plot to hijack or blow up an airplane with a commonly carried item as a key component,” Schneier writes. “The component should be so critical to the plot that the TSA will have no choice but to ban the item once the plot is uncovered. I want to see a plot horrific and ridiculous, but just plausible enough to take seriously.” The winner gets an autographed copy of Schneier’s book, Beyond Fear, and if he can swing it, a phone call from a movie producer.