Best of brickbats: The Obama years, 2009-2016.

• Author: Oliver, Charles

In 2015, the Pentagon admitted to accidentally shipping live anthrax spores to labs in all 50 states and nine foreign countries. The labs expected the spores to be dead.

In 2008, officials in Tempe, Arizona, said they needed more housing for deaf senior citizens. So with the aid of $2.6 million from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Cardinal Capital Management and the Arizona Deaf Senior Citizens Coalition built a 75-room apartment building just for the elderly deaf. The apartments have lights that flash when the doorbell rings and other amenities designed for the hearing-impaired. But then, in 2012, HUD said that because management prefers to rent to deaf tenants, the building violates federal civil rights law. The agency demanded that the owners take steps to make sure that 75 percent of residents of the building are not deaf. Two years later, the department dropped its objections.

In Ontario, people donated some 40,000 pounds of aid for victims of the 2013 Oklahoma tornadoes. But U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it was a commercial shipment, which meant each food item had to have a certificate from the Food and Drug Administration. After a three-day delay, officials finally allowed the food into the country.

A 2012 federal transportation bill designated Broadway and 7th Avenue in New York City as federal highways, which means they are now subject to the billboard limits imposed by the Highway Beautification Act. The Federal Highway Administration denied reports it was trying to force the removal of billboards in Times Square.

The Secret Service in 2015 forced hundreds of children with cancer and their parents out of Lafayette Square Park in Washington, D.C., disrupting a planned vigil. The park was barricaded for hours, and families were not allowed to get back in to retrieve their belongings. Parents said agents told them they closed the square because President Obama had left the White House from a nearby exit.

An Obama administration official reportedly got into a fistfight with a Native American college student over a Washington Redskins shirt the student was wearing. Barrett Dahl says William Mendoza, executive director of the White House Initiative of American Indian and Alaska Native Education, approached him, called him stupid and uneducated for wearing the shirt, and attacked him when he turned to walk away.

The National Park Service has removed merchandise with the Confederate battle flag...