Freedom Dogs

The pitchforks are getting closer to the white knuckles that will soon be clutching them. I doubt the revolution in America will not happen this weekend, but stories like this one about congress' excessive travel spending are coming at us so often that the dam of frustrations is sure to burst soon.

Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands.

The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.

The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among lawmakers as "codels," has risen nearly 70% since 2005, when an influence-peddling scandal led to a ban on travel funded by lobbyists, according to the data.

Keep it coming guys, you'll be selling real estate back home like Tom Daschle soon.