Whenever we hear that Washington has some new idea that officials say will help all of us, we just assume that it's more bad news -- even when it may be good. That's simply the way we've been conditioned. However, rumbling in the background of the news about what Congress is up to are some things it's done right.

Look at the recent news from the Department of Homeland Security. You may have missed the story about how telemarketers, with their random-phone-number dialers, were constantly calling the Homeland Security top-secret hot lines. These are lines the department reserves for instant communication with governors to warn them of a national emergency -- to tell them that the bad guys are coming, or some such thing.

When the top-secret hot-line phones rang, the governors would answer, sometimes in a panic, expecting to hear that terrorists were in town. Instead, they'd get a telemarketer asking if they'd like to change their long-distance service.

As you might imagine, the Department of Homeland Security was quite upset at all these telemarketers' calls. It decided that the best thing to do would be to put its top-secret hot-line numbers in the National Do Not Call Registry. And so it did.

The registry, as it turns out, works. The governors say they can now sit down to dinner with their important guests without having to jump up to answer the Homeland Security hot line -- only to be asked if they'd like to buy a sewing machine or subscribe to some magazines.

This, as you see, isn't a bad-news story about another goof at Homeland Security. It's a story about how every so often the bureaucracy comes up with a good idea -- one that works. The National Do Not Call Registry.

This isn't big news, but it's a lot better than some.

Truman Taylor (TrumanBTaylor@aol.com)