Lawrence Small, Living Large.

Okay, I'm back to the blog. That last road trip kept me away one day longer than planned. In the interim the independent committee appointed by the Smithsonian to look into the management of its affairs under its former chief exec Lawrence Small, issued a report that pretty much wiped the floor with Small. You can find the full report here.

And as was pointed out today by my Washington-based blogger colleague Tyler Green, who has kept a close and useful watch on this story for a while, the report wasn't too kind either to the Board of Regents that let Small compensate himself ever more handsomely, and in a variety of ways, while they did not much of anything. (Go here for a report issued earlier this week by the Regents themselves.) In Japan that kind of embarassment would require ritual suicide. In the U.S., as Green points out, it gets you appointed to the search committee for Small's successor.