Home Run

While a House committee's interrogation of Major League Baseball figures over illegal steroid use is grabbing most of today's headlines, far more significant business was being conducted yesterday in the Senate. With more than 40 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, Senators Dick Durbin and Rick Santorum (a Democrat and a Republican, respectively) passed an amendment to the Senate's budget resolution. The amendment would fully fund President Bush's $3.7 billion budget request for bilateral HIV/AIDS programs. On top of that, it would provide $500 million in multilateral funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Sounds like a home run to me.