WASHINGTON -- Those in charge of protecting us from terrorists are getting heat again, and this time it's for dropping the ball in determining what's needed to ensure the safety of children on school buses.

The chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security fired off a letter on Thursday to the Transportation Security Administration, rapping the agency's knuckles for making little progress on the "School Bus Risk Assessment," which Congress last January ordered it to conduct.

The TSA says it is moving as fast as it can, but that didn't satisfy Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. The panel chairman said he was particularly ticked off by the inability of TSA staff members to answer questions during a meeting Monday with committee staff.

He also criticized the agency for requesting just $500,000 for the study, which Rep. Thompson estimated could cost as much as $4 million to produce.

Disabled workers are disappearing from the federal work force, even though government agencies are required to recruit them and establish hiring goals.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Tuesday that federal employees who are blind, deaf, paralyzed, mentally disabled or amputees are leaving the government at twice the rate at which they were hired.

In 2005, for example, 810 disabled workers were hired government-wide, while 2,200 left. Among the possible reasons: the government has slacked off its recruiting and retention efforts, baby-boomer disabled workers are retiring in growing numbers or, perhaps, the private sector has become more welcoming.

Maybe the chance to ride a Segway could persuade more disabled folks to try a government job. The U.S. General Services Administration tentatively ruled last week that the way-cool, two-wheeled vehicles will be allowed in federal government buildings for those who suffer "mobility impairments," as the GSA put it.

Feb. 12 marks the 199th birthday of Charles Darwin, the grand old man of natural selection, whose theories on evolution still are rejected by better than a third of Americans, according to pollsters. There will be more than 850 observances of Darwin's birthday worldwide, including film festivals, museum exhibits and banquets.

Expect even more fetes -- and controversy -- next year, which will bring the 150th anniversary of Darwin's "Origin of Species."

It served as the site of the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II, but now the once-mighty USS Missouri is having trouble paying the $200,000 annual rent it is charged by the Navy for its berth at Pearl Harbor.

The Navy says it must charge the battleship fair-market rent because the decommissioned vessel is privately owned.

But the nonprofit USS Missouri Memorial Association -- which maintains the ship and its museum using funds from donations and admission charges -- says the steep rent is posing a financial hardship.

Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, is pressing the Navy to cut the Big Mo a big break.

President Bush gave a quiet little noogie to Saudi Arabia, when he declared last Monday to be "Religious Freedom Day, 2008."

He issued the news release that day from, yes, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during his trip to the kingdom where practicing Christianity is illegal and Jews are demonized.

Even so, Bush was all smiles during public events with his Saudi hosts.

The 241 U.S. Marines, sailors and soldiers killed in Beirut in 1983 were America's first military mass casualties from a Middle East-spawned terror attack.

There as peacekeepers in the Lebanese civil war, they died when Islamic Jihad operatives detonated a truck bomb next to their barracks.

To remind us of that tragedy, which has been overshadowed in the history of terrorism, Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., is proposing that the U.S. Postal Service issue a commemorative stamp in honor of those killed in the bombing and another 32 who also died during the 1982-1984 mission.