Another big Dem donor gets hundreds of millions in no-bid contract

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - The scourge of smallpox has been all but eradicated for decades, with the only live samples of the source bacteria locked away in laboratories in the US and Russia. Nonetheless, the US maintains a large stockpile of proven smallpox vaccines just in case anyone gets access to the disease, and can quickly distribute it to the American population and prevent an epidemic, even after exposure. There is no reason to spend another dollar developing a new smallpox vaccine — and yet that is exactly what the Obama administration did, and in a most peculiar manner:

Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.

Why would they have done that? Well, look no further than the controlling shareholder of Siga:

Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.