Ellington

"This investment is a vote of confidence in the quality of research and development conducted in Mississippi, including advanced computing capabilities that save lives and money by keeping our warfighters ahead of our adversaries."

—U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, chairman of the Senate Appropriations and Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, on his securing $27.2 million in U.S. Army contracts with Mississippi.

Why it Stinks: First off, war is costly—and hellish—whether it's waged with machine guns or supercomputers. Second, it's interesting that Sen. Cochran, who came within a hair's width of losing his Senate seat in the Republican primary against state Sen. Chris McDaniel because of his penchant for pork-barrel spending over the years, is already back in the saddle raining federal taxpayer cash on Mississippi and beating his chest about it. Maybe Mississippi's congressional Republicans didn't learn their Tea Party lesson after all.