Wartime riders

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid may have been outraged that the Bush administration got the Iraq war funding bill it wanted, but Reid was not so irate as to miss the chance to pack the measure with unrelated matter for businesspeople back home.

Nevada is a kind of mecca for billboard companies, so Reid slid in language that allows those companies to rebuild damaged billboards instead of taking them down, as required under current law—no doubt a relief to troops in Iraq.

Reid also supported a provision allowing American and Continental airlines to reduce the contributions to their pension plans by almost $2 billion in the next 10 years, language opposed by the White House.