Remember when House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said in January that he had “bad news” for members of Congress - that they’d have to put more hours in at the office?

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who will become House majority leader and is writing the schedule for the next Congress, said members should expect longer hours than the brief week they have grown accustomed to.

“I have bad news for you,” Hoyer told reporters. “Those trips you had planned in January, forget ‘em. We will be working almost every day in January, starting with the 4th.”
[…]
He said members need to spend more time in the Capitol to pass laws and oversee federal agencies.

Well that didn’t last long.

But 10 months into the session, with their legislative agenda often in gridlock with the Bush administration and a big election year looming, the Democrats are now planning a lighter schedule when the 110th Congress begins its second year in mid-January.

The House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, told fellow Democrats this week that the House would not be in session next year on Fridays, except in June for work on appropriations bills.

Maybe they figure fewer days at work will prevent their approval rating from sinking lower.

Appeasement at its finest… wrapped in moral bankruptcy for good measure. But really, who’s surprised that liberals would take this position? Not me.

While it appears from more than one point of view that the War in Iraq and the War on Terror are situations from which we may never be able to extricate ourselves, from the mountains of Pakistan comes a very simple solution: convert to Islam.

Before we reject this out of hand, lets seriously consider it for a moment: Osama Bin Laden promised the wars would be over if Americans convert to Islam.

This may sound like a lot to ask from the most religious country in the industrialized world. But of all the Christians in America today who profess to be religious, how many of us are seriously devout?
[…]
All in all, converting to Islam would be a small price to pay for an end to the killing and maiming of our sons and daughters, not to mention the billions of dollars we could put to better use than fighting this perpetual war.

I really don’t have to add any commentary of my own to this one. It was only a matter of time before one of them said it.

Here’s more “value to our economy” from our lovely friends, the illegal aliens:

Six undocumented Mexican immigrants were arrested today by U.S. Border Patrol agents at Qualcomm Stadium, after a report that they were stealing food and water meant for evacuees, according to spokesman Damon Foreman.

San Diego police responded to a call about alleged theft from the evacuation center and encountered six people in a van who didn’t speak English and didn’t have California driver’s licenses, Foreman said. The police officers called the Border Patrol, who arrived at the stadium and made the arrests, he said. Foreman said the immigrants admitted they were Mexican citizens and that they were stealing.

If only they’d spend this much effort trying to support the troops.

Remember Scott Thomas Beauchamp? He’s the “Baghdad Diarist” who wrote a piece called “Shock Troops” for The New Republic claiming he’d witnessed all sorts of atrocities committed by the U.S. military in Iraq. (Very reminiscent of John Kerry’s “Jengis Khan” moment, isn’t it?)

As expected, the big “We told you so” moment has arrived and the story has been proven to be a gigantic anti-military lie.

And to make matters worse, the liberal rag that published this garbage has been trying to cover up the big lie ever since they realized the world would find out. And they’re pissed off the public knows about it. They’ve gone silent on the story hoping it will go away - claiming that “they’re waiting for all the facts to come in before they do any further reporting on the story.”

Gee, guys. It sure would’ve been nice if you’d “waited for all the facts to come in” BEFORE publishing such anti-military propaganda while we’re in the middle of a war.

Now that Democrats are in power, what was once called “corruption” they now call “strategy”.

Remember when Democrats called Tom Delay’s K Street project a “rampant abuse of power“?

In his dealings with K Street lobbyists, DeLay explicitly stated he would operate by “the old adage of punish your enemies and reward your friends.”
[…]
Lost in the pay-to-play system is any concern for good governance.
[…]
RAMPANT ABUSE OF POWER: New York Times columnist David Brooks explained “the real problem wasn’t DeLay, it was DeLayism, the whole culture that merged K Street with the Hill, and held that raising money is the most important way to contribute to the team.” The culture permeated the entire congressional leadership; they were willing buyers of what lobbyists were selling.

Even Nancy Pelosi “pledged” to “kill the K Street project” among other things on her way to leading the “the effort to turn the most closed, corrupt Congress in history into the most open and honest Congress in history.”

That is why, with our Democratic Declaration of Honest Leadership and Open Government, we are pledging to enact and enforce legislation that will:

-Ban all gifts and travel from lobbyists. Period.
-Kill the K Street Project, the Republican plan that trades favors for lobbying jobs, and toughen public disclosure of lobbyist activity…

Nevermind.

When Republicans were in control, Ms. Pelosi and company denounced the “K Street Project,” run by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. They protested that corporate lobbyists were allowed to become a fourth branch of government–and in some cases their protests had merit, as Republicans curried favor with money interests.

Meanwhile, Democrats under Rep. Rahm Emanuel and Sen. Schumer have quietly erected their own K Street Project, and employ some of the same strong-arm tactics they once deplored. “I’ve never felt the squeeze that we’re under now to give to Democrats and to hire them,” says one telecom industry representative. “They’ve put out the word that if you have an issue on trade, taxes, or regulation, you’d better be a donor and you’d better not be part of any effort to run ads against our freshmen incumbents.”

It’s not an issue of ideology, it’s an issue of power and access. But for Democrats to have campaigned on it as an issue of corruption only to turn around and engage in it themselves once in power… it’s now an issue of hypocrisy, too.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Last week we saw how MSM was spinning the good news out of Iraq into bad news.

Now look how the news is being spun:

The Bush administration is starving for good news out of Iraq, and it may finally have some: new U.S. government statistics showing that violent attacks of all kinds are down to levels not seen since 2005.

But until recently, the administration appears to have resisted acknowledging a key element of the new data, because it flies in the face of President George W. Bush’s ongoing rhetorical confrontation with Iran’s clerical regime.

That’s right, there is good news out of Iraq… but Bush is lying to the American people and covering it up.

So will the protestors start chanting, “Bush lied, people lived”?

Hillary’s found some more campaign contributions from some highly suspect sources in Chinatown:

Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton’s campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown.
[…]
The Times examined the cases of more than 150 donors who provided checks to Clinton after fundraising events geared to the Chinese community. One-third of those donors could not be found using property, telephone or business records. Most have not registered to vote, according to public records.

And several dozen were described in financial reports as holding jobs — including dishwasher, server or chef — that would normally make it difficult to donate amounts ranging from $500 to the legal maximum of $2,300 per election.

But then again, she’s a Democrat, so laws are just simply suggestions rather than enforceable codifications of rules, right?

UPDATE:
Blue on blue:

“This morning we all read in L.A. Times that many Clinton campaign contributions are raising eyebrows again. Many of their donors are not even registered to vote, and at least one denied even making any contribution at all,” Edwards Campaign Manager David Bonior said in a statement on Friday.

“Senator Clinton has said public financing is the answer. Senator Edwards has opted to take public financing, but Senator Clinton has not. Senator Clinton should explain why she doesn’t mean what she says…The bottom line is we need a nominee who can do two things: campaign in all 50 states and challenge our broken system in Washington. With every day the growing question has to be can Hillary Clinton do either?”

And John Edwards should know a thing or two about illegally funneled campaign contributions.

UPDATE 2:
And look what the NY Post found:

Hsiao Yen Wang, a cook in Chinatown, is listed as giving Clinton $1,000 on April 13. Contacted yesterday, she told The Post she had written a check.

But it was on behalf of a man named David Guo, president of the Fujian American Cuisine Council, and Wang told The Post that Guo had repaid her for the $1,000 contribution.

Such “straw donations” are strictly prohibited by federal law.

And what was the Clinton campaign’s response to getting busted for violating federal election laws… again?

The Clinton campaign dismissed the L.A. Times story as derogatory to Chinese-Americans.

Typical Clinton-like failure to accept any responsibility whatsoever and instead project they’re own pathetic behavior. I suppose taking advantage of poor foreigners to illegally bundle campaign donations is highly respectful of such folks.

What media bias?

NAJAF, Iraq — At what’s believed to be the world’s largest cemetery, where Shiite Muslims aspire to be buried and millions already have been, business isn’t good.

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that’s cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

Only the MSM could position a story about a drop in violent deaths as a bad thing…

…anything to blame Bush for something.

The Norman Hsu fundraising scandal was nothing compared to this…

The scandal has been ongoing for 8 years… but don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of it, the MSM and the Clintons have done a good job keeping it out of the public spotlight.

Remember this summer when Democrats admitted that good news in Iraq was bad news for their party?

Well, it’s that good news that has Democrats suddenly talking less about Iraq and focusing more on things like healthcare and taxes…

Because they obviously don’t want to talk about this:

In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 — down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004.

During the first 12 days of October the death rates of Iraqis and Americans fell still further. So far during the Muslim month of Ramadan, which began Sept. 13 and ends this weekend, 36 U.S. soldiers have been reported as killed in hostile actions. That is remarkable given that the surge has deployed more American troops in more dangerous places and that in the past al-Qaeda has staged major offensives during Ramadan. Last year, at least 97 American troops died in combat during Ramadan. Al-Qaeda tried to step up attacks this year, U.S. commanders say — so far, with stunningly little success.

…and most definitely not this:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

So yeah, let’s ignore the war now and talk about healthcare instead…