CHEER? You thought the misnomers Clear Skies Act and No Child Left Behind were bad? Well get a load of this doozy from Bush's Environmental Protection Agency: CHEER. It stands for Children's Health Environmental Exposure Research Study, and what it would've done—had Democrats not succeeded in getting it halted—is use children as guinea pigs in pesticide testing. The $9 million, 2-year study would've been funded to the tune of $2 million by the American Chemical Council, and it would've rewarded 60 participating families (who reportedly live in low-income neighborhoods) with $970, a camcorder, and children's clothes. Leading the charge against the study were Sens. Barbara Boxer and Bill Nelson, who demanded the study's cancellation as a condition for confirming Bush's nomination for EPA head, its acting director (who ordered CHEER), Stephen Johnson. In an editorial where it included Johnson among "The Worst of the Bad Nominees," the New York Times writes, "The idea that the E.P.A. would pay families to continue exposing their children to potentially dangerous chemicals is on its face outrageous - and made worse by the study's ghoulish acronym." (Via Sploid.)