I suppose you can't go around raiding medical marijuana dispensaries and prosecuting legitimate pain doctors on an empty stomach:

An internal Justice audit, released Friday, showed the department spent nearly $7 million to plan, host or send employees to ten conferences over the last two years. This included paying $4 per meatball at one lavish dinner and spreading an average of $25 worth of snacks around to each participant at a movie-themed party.

More than $13,000 was spent on cookies and brownies for 1,542 people who attended a four-day "Weed and Seed" conference in August 2005, according to the audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. [AP]

As galling as it is that we're footing the bill while federal narc soldiers gorge themselves and plot new ways to arrest us all, I'd rather see this money spent on munchies than machine guns. But it does suck that my tax dollars are helping subsidize a brownie-infested "Weed and Seed" conference that I didn’t even get invited to. I guess there's no reason to waste a press pass on a malicious blogger who's just gonna call the whole thing evil and whine that the brownies at the NORML conference were more memorable.

If nothing else, it's now clear that waging a callous barbaric war on their fellow citizens hasn't cost the feds their appetite.