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In the last few months, a grass-roots, federalist revolt against Washington, D.C. has begun to spread through states that are home to politically active gun owners. Montana and Tennessee have enacted state laws saying that federal rules do not apply to firearms manufactured entirely within the state, and similar bills are pending in Texas, Alaska, Minnesota, and South Carolina.

Yet the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and Explosives now claims that that not only is such a state law invalid, but “because the act conflicts with federal firearms laws and regulations, federal law supersedes the act.”

Tennessee’s law already has taken effect. The BATF’s letter on July 16 to firearms manufacturers and dealers in the state says “federal law requires a license to engage in the business of manufacturing firearms or ammunition, or to deal in firearms, even if the firearms or ammunition remain within the same state.”

Normally, ex-veeps only get six months of protection at taxpayer expense. But Cheney asked for an extension, and President Obama – whom Cheney has excoriated in several interviews since leaving office – recently signed off.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano signed the order extending Cheney’s security detail, her spokeswoman Sara Kuban confirmed Monday.

If the Obama administration hadn’t gone along with Cheney’s request, he would have been forced to hire his own security agents – or go without.

Scientific fraud is a pronounced problem in clinical medicine and particularly in pharmaceutical research. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conservatively reports deficiencies and flaws in 1 or 2 studies in every 10.

Dr Daniele Fanelli’s study illustrates the problem clearly. When asked if they had ever fabricated, or falsified results, up to 5% of scientists admitted outright cheating. One third of scientists admitted questionable practices. That is, they manipulated their data to give a false impression. The scientists modified the outcome to “improve” results. A similar one third of scientists admitted observing misconduct in others. Notably, those scientists who participate in fraud are often serial offenders. Having successfully fabricated one study, they find fraud easier than the painstaking task of conducting valid studies. The published figures on scientific fraud are clearly underestimates. Expecting all fraudsters to admit their offence when asked for your study is naive, even if you do guarantee not to tell.

Fanelli reminds us too that the conventional response by the orthodoxy to the revelation of fraud, in which blame is deflected on a “few bad apples” such as Hwang Woo-Suk’s fake stem-cell lines or Jan Hendrik Schön’s duplicated graphs, is short of the mark. It seems the problem is somewhat more endemic.

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If the feds end up spending that amount, it could be more than the federal government has spent on any single effort in American history.

For the government to be on the hook for the total amount, worst-case scenarios would have to come to pass in a variety of federal programs, which is unlikely, says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the government’s financial bailout programs, in testimony prepared for delivery to the House oversight committee Tuesday.

The Treasury Department says less than $2 trillion has been spent so far.

Still, the enormity of the IG’s projection underscores the size of the economic disaster that hit the nation over the past year and the unprecedented sums mobilized by the federal government under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to confront it.

In fact, $23 trillion is more than the total cost of all the wars the United States has ever fought, put together. World War II, for example, cost $4.1 trillion in 2008 dollars, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Even the Moon landings and the New Deal didn’t come close to $23 trillion: the Moon shot in 1969 cost an estimated $237 billion in current dollars, and the entire Depression-era Roosevelt relief program came in at $500 billion, according to Jim Bianco of Bianco Research.

The annual gross domestic product of the United States is just over $14 trillion.

Unpaid job seekers can keep their resumes fresh by boosting their experience and learning new skills, experts say, but others warn businesses may take advantage of the jobless and that it is illegal for commercial companies not to pay workers.

Dana Lin, 22, is one of the 14.7 million unemployed workers in the United States. She lost her marketing job at a technology company near San Francisco in April and since then has been working for free for about five hours a week for Internet company Jobnob.com.

“Every company has thousands of people applying for each job, and I realized I needed more appeal,” said Lin, a graduate of Cornell University. Since being laid off, she has applied unsuccessfully for about 50 jobs.

“In some cases companies might be getting the better end of it (by having unpaid workers),” she said. “But it’s nice to have something occupy yourself with and when speaking to prospective employers it’s nice to say ‘I haven’t just been sitting around all day, I’ve actually been doing something.'”

It’s not only the unemployed taking on free work. Some employed people are being asked by bosses to go without pay.

British Airways last month asked its British-based employees to volunteer for up to a month’s unpaid work. Some companies and U.S. state and city governments have made staff take unpaid furloughs, but some employees still work anyway to keep up or because they are worried about losing their job.

Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, warns that while people can volunteer time for non-profit groups and government, it is illegal for commercial companies to not pay workers.

“It’s not just a bad idea, it’s illegal,” Eisenbrey. “The law says (companies) may not suffer or permit employees to work for less than the minimum wage.

Mr. Hormats, if confirmed by the Senate, will buttress Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign to use economic, trade and environmental issues to redefine Washington’s relationship with nations such as China, India and Russia, said administration officials.

Mr. Hormats also will play a central role in managing Washington’s “strategic and economic dialogue” with Beijing, a diplomatic exchange overseen by Mrs. Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The first Obama administration U.S.-China dialogue is slated for this month in Washington, according to the State Department.

Mr. Hormats “will be key in Secretary Clinton’s efforts to bring more visibility to the work of the department on economic matters,” a senior U.S. official said Friday.

Mr. Hormats said he couldn’t comment — standard practice for nominees before and during the confirmation process.

Before joining Goldman Sachs, Mr. Hormats had a career in public service, holding posts in Republican and Democratic administrations.

The administration’s annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama’s budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.

The release of the update — usually scheduled for mid-July — has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess.

The administration is pressing for votes before then on its $1 trillion health care initiative, which lawmakers are arguing over how to finance.

The White House budget director, Peter Orszag, said on Sunday that the administration believes the “chances are high” of getting a health care bill by then. But new analyses showing runaway costs are jeopardizing Senate passage.

“Instead of a dream, this routine report could be a nightmare,” Tony Fratto, a former Treasury Department official and White House spokesman under President George W. Bush, said of the delayed budget update. “There are some things that can’t be escaped.”

The administration earlier this year predicted that unemployment would peak at about 9 percent without a big stimulus package and 8 percent with one. Congress did pass a $787 billion two-year stimulus measure, yet unemployment soared to 9.5 percent in June and appears headed for double digits.

Obama’s current forecast anticipates 3.2 percent growth next year, then 4 percent or higher growth from 2011 to 2013. Private forecasts are less optimistic, especially for next year.

Any downward revision in growth or revenue projections would mean that budget deficits would be far higher than the administration is now suggesting.

Setting the stage for bleaker projections, Vice President Joe Biden recently conceded, “We misread how bad the economy was” in January. Obama modified that by suggesting the White House had “incomplete” information.