IS IT SNOWING IN HADES THIS MORNING? How else to explain the fact the number two man at the Department of Veterans Affairs just asked Congress to get serious about cutting the bureaucrat protections that prevent firing incompetent managers in the federal civil service. The Merit Systems Protection Board – which recently reversed three VA firings of bad hospital directors – is one of the biggest of many such roadblocks.

Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson wants to strip VA members of the Senior Executive Service and the department’s doctors of the right to appeal adverse personnel actions to the MSPB, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Luke Rosiak. If Congress goes along, which seems likely, Gibson could become the guy behind the most significant and positive civil service reform since, well, the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 that created the MSPB. Once it happens at VA, which federal department will be next?