The Department of Agriculture has a really special program in the Wildlife Services division. They conduct “predator control” operations in the West, which basically involves going around killing stuff, especially coyotes. While they do more traditional things like lay traps, snares and poisons (sorta problematic for other wildlife, dickwads), they also let their employees fly around and shoot coyotes from planes. Their justification? Coyotes kill domestic animals (being as they are, like, predators). Last year, your Department of Agriculture killed 87,000 coyotes, but they’re being forced to do an investigation into the shooting-animals-from-airplanes program because one crashed in Utah this year. No one expects anything to change. [Yahoo News]

* Annual “Coyotes terrorize Rock Creek Park” story. [WP]
* If your friends are too dumb, join this virtual book club — the spring book is Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead: Stories. [The Happy Booker]
* “If you’re a Linux-using blogger interested in Ruby and Information Architecture, you have a lot of options for how you want to spend Wednesday night.” [Ross Notes]
* “5 Not-In-Service buses today!! Hell, one of them looked brand new. It certainly wasn’t a design I’d seen before. The worst part, you ask? It even looked nice and warm in there. Meanwhile on the sidewalk, people are shivering, sneezing, sniffling, coughing…the wind is blowing harder than some parts of this past weekend. And we finally get picked up…again…to a full bus with almost no seats. Thank you again, WMATA for continuing to justify the corporate need for an obligatory 15 to 20 minute buffer period in arriving on time to work…” [Subway State]
* Panda head interviews one of the Ratatat guys. [panda head]

* Reliable Source: Selwa “Lucky ” Roosevelt raises $4m at “Fifty for Fifty Club”. . . Alberto Gonzales grabs lunch from Leesburg Pike Taco Bell. [WP]
* Inside the Beltway: Local pet owners told to be alert for coyotes. . . CNN invites Alex Trebek to the White House Correspondent’s Association dinner. [WT]
* Rush & Molloy: Paul Haggis, the director of “Crash,” is making a film of Richard Clarke’s “Against All Enemies.” [NYDN]