That Brookings Institution study on our beefy federal bureaucracy has caught John Edwards’ eye: Edwards said the Bush administration had “layered on a whole crowd of supervisory people in government,” according to a report in The Washington Post. “We don’t need any more supervisors…We got to get rid of these people,” said Edwards. In a plan released on Kerry’s Web site, the Democratic nominee pledged to “thin out the top ranks of government by restoring the governmentwide target of no more than one supervisor per 15 subordinates.” That target was set under the Clinton administration’s “reinventing government” initiative.