PBS, tonight (In the New York area, Channels 13 and 49 at 9) By tonight's accounting on "Frontline," the Department of Agriculture is one big boondoggle.

So when William T. Lauder, a former Babylon town supervisor, got up and said, "I'm convinced this is the biggest boondoggle I've yet seen," he broke the applause meter.

Indeed the dire visions evoked by that unassuming "is" are realized, woe unto us, in this big, fat biblical boondoggle.

McCain is one (though it should be noted that the big federal boondoggles in retiree-rich Arizona are Social Security and Medicare, not corporate welfare).

If it doesn't, it will be the biggest boondoggle ever built.

Not because this is a big boondoggle - it's not - or because it will save lots of money.

The jet, the Martin P6M SeaMaster, was a big boondoggle.

"It's one of the biggest boondoggles ever seen in Federal construction," Mr. Duncan said.

Martin Anderson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who served as President Reagan's domestic policy adviser, took a harsher view, citing the potential for big boondoggles.

An editorial in The New York Times summed up non-Alaska opinions when it asked if the dam project was "the world's biggest boondoggle".