You Don't Say: Sammy Sosa Took Steroids

Yet another leak from the fine folks at Major League Baseball or those whose hands are on the supposedly confidential report of players who tested positive for steroids in 2003.

Prominent names were leaked, but none more prominent than Alex Rodriguez until yesterday. That is, until Sammy Sosa joined that list.

Sammy Sosa tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003, The New York Times reported Tuesday on its Web site, the latest in a string of baseball stars implicated in the sport's steroids scandal of the past decade.

The Times said Sosa is one of 104 players who tested positive in baseball's anonymous 2003 survey, which has been the subject of a protracted court fight. The paper did not identify the drug.

It cited lawyers with knowledge of the 2003 drug-testing results and reported they spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to publicly discuss material under court seal.

Sosa was best known for his run at the single season home run records against Mark McGwire. He hit 60 home runs or more three times, which is something that no other player ever accomplished (McGwire hit 60 home runs or more only twice in his career).

Sosa has retired, so his record is complete. Don't expect him to get into the Hall of Fame, although it depends on how he responds to the allegations. His testimony before Congress will be scrutinized:

Several of the game's biggest stars, including home-run king Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, have been implicated in steroids use.

Miguel Tejada was sentenced to one year of probation for misleading Congress after he pleaded guilty and admitted he withheld information about an ex-teammate's use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez is serving a 50-game suspension for violating baseball's drug policy. A-Rod in February admitted using steroids from 2001-03 with Texas following a report by Sports Illustrated that he was among the 104 players on the list.

Sosa sat alongside Palmeiro, Canseco and McGwire at a 2005 hearing before Congress and testified: "To be clear, I have never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs."

"I have never injected myself or had anyone inject me with anything," he told the House Government Reform Committee on March 17, 2005. "I have not broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic. I have been tested as recently as 2004, and I am clean."

That left open the possibility he used a substance legally in the Dominican Republic that would have been illegal to use in the United States without a prescription.

You Don't Say: Congress Refuses To Fund Gitmo Closure

You could see this coming from a mile away. All the posturing doesn't mean anything when you have filibuster proof majorities in Congress and you choose not to fund the closure of Guantanamo Bay's detainee facility because the US hasn't figured out what to do with the terrorists held there.

No one wants to bring them into the US, and these aren't exactly people you want hanging around in your backyard.

The Administration wanted to close the facility, and it was among the first executive orders issued, but it was merely a wish list. The hard work of dealing with the reality as it is, not as the left wishes it to be, means that the Democrats have to come to grips with a national security issue on which they've repeatedly grandstanded. The Democrats, President Obama included, claimed they wanted to close Guantanamo Bay, but now that they're in a position to do so, they're finding excuses not to.

If the facility is as evil as they claim, they should have the political courage to close it. They do not.

The facility was never as evil or bad as the left claimed, and it did serve a useful purpose of keeping these terrorists from our shores and out of contact with their fellow jihadis. Shuttering the facility doesn't change the fact that these detainees need to be held somewhere - and that gets to the crux of the matter.

Those on the far left may want to see the detainees released, but even those Democrats who aren't on that fringe of the party know that they can't release the detainees. The evidence is overwhelming that those who are released can and do go back to jihad and waging war against the United States and our allies.

Guantanamo Bay may not be the perfect solution, but it's a far sight better than anything offered up by the Democrats.

UPDATE:
Allahpundit also weighs in and notices the quandary that Democrats have put themselves in.

You Don't Say: Minorities Hit Hardest By Foreclosures In NYC Metro Area

This is astoundingly obvious to anyone who's paid attention over the past decade. All the efforts to increase home ownership have been to increase the numbers of minorities who are able to buy homes.

Is it any wonder that minorities are among the hardest hit by the foreclosure mess and the downturn in the real estate market?

But the storm has fallen with a special ferocity on black and Latino homeowners, the analysis shows. Defaults occur three times as often in mostly minority census tracts as in mostly white ones. Eighty-five percent of the worst-hit neighborhoods — where the default rate is at least double the regional average — have a majority of black and Latino homeowners.

And the hardest blows rain down on the backbone of minority neighborhoods: the black middle class. In New York City, for example, black households making more than $68,000 a year are almost five times as likely to hold high-interest subprime mortgages as are whites of similar — or even lower — incomes.

This holds a special poignancy. Just four or five years ago, black homeownership was rising sharply, after decades in which discriminatory lending and zoning practices discouraged many blacks from buying. Now, as damage ripples outward, black families in foreclosure lose savings and credit, neighbors see the value of their homes decline, and renters are evicted.

That pattern plays out across the nation. A study released this week by the Pew Research Center also shows foreclosure taking the heaviest toll on counties that have black and Latino majorities, with the New York region among the badly hit.

Homeownership was seen as a positive for politicians across the political spectrum and affordable housing was the holy grail. Programs to get minorities into homes was thus a way to curry favor with the minorities, and to achieve political goals. The economics was ignored.

It is instructive to note that one of the New York Times own economics and business reporters found himself foreclosed because he got in way over his head and didn't think twice about the damage he was about to do to his personal finances.

The banking industry was told to lend - even to those who were not on solid financial footing. The money was coming fast and furious and it created a real estate bubble because many of those borrowers should never have been extended credit in the first place. They accelerated the demand for homes, pushing the prices ever higher. To compensate, the lenders were forced to extend even more credit - particularly to minorities who had been denied credit in the past (because they were high credit risks and lacked the ability to repay on the mortgage obligations that they were now suddenly deemed worthy to accept).

The merry-go-round had to stop, and when it did, all those who bought homes suddenly found themselves overextended and they couldn't turn around and sell their homes to someone else as the demand dried up.

Prices dropped. Fast.

And those foreclosures will hit minorities harder - because they are more likely to be subprime borrowers who lacked the ability to repay on the mortgage obligations they had no business getting in the first place.

You Don't Say: Ethanol Programs Raise Food Costs

This comes as no surprise:

Food stamps and child nutrition programs are expected to cost up to $900 million more this year because of increased ethanol use.

Higher use of the corn-based fuel additive accounted for about 10 percent to 15 percent of the rise in food prices between April 2007 and April 2008, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That could mean the government will have to spend more on food programs for the needy during the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30. It estimated the additional cost at up to $900 million.

The CBO said other factors, such as skyrocketing energy costs, have had an even greater effect than ethanol on food prices. CBO economists estimate that increased costs for food programs overall due to higher food prices will be about $5.3 billion this budget year.

Using food as fuel increases the costs of food, and actually requires more fuel because ethanol "enhanced" fuel doesn't get nearly as good gas mileage.

You Don't Say: NYS Beheadings May Have Been Honor Killing

Chalk one up to the blatantly obvious. There's nothing honorable about honor killings, and yet they continue all over the world on a regular basis. They are far more uncommon in the United States, but from time to time such criminal acts do make headlines.

In this case, it's a particularly brutal honor killing where the man beheaded his wife.

The gruesome death of Orchard Park resident Aasiya Zubair Hassan — who was found decapitated — and the arrest of her estranged husband are drawing widespread attention, as speculation roils about the role that the couple’s religion may have played.

Muzzammil Hassan, 44, was arrested Thursday and charged with second- degree murder after telling police his wife was dead at the office of their television station in the Village of Orchard Park.

While Muslim leaders have urged against applying cultural stereotypes to the crime, advocates for women linked the killing to attitudes in Muslim societies.

“This was apparently a terroristic version of honor killing, a murder rooted in cultural notions about women’s subordination to men,” said Marcia Pappas, New York State president of the National Organization for Women.

She decried the scant national media attention paid to the story, which broke the same day as the commuter plane crash that killed 50 people in Clarence.

While domestic violence affects all cultures, Muslim women find it harder to break the silence about it because of a stigma, she said.

“Too many Muslim men are using their religious beliefs to justify violence against women,” she said.

Women are treated little better than chattel under Islamic law, and misogyny is part and parcel of Sharia. Offenses that could trigger honor killing include appearing in the presence of other unrelated men or behaving in a way that Islamists deem inappropriate.

In this case, Aasiya Zubair Hassan may have been brutally murdered because she was seeking a divorce from her abusive husband, Muzzammil. There had been numerous reports of domestic violence, so it is also possible that she was murdered simply because she disobeyed her husband.

What makes this all the more egregious is that Muzzammil Hassan is the founder of Bridges TV, a Muslim agitprop broadcast network funded by the Saudis to spread the message about Islam. I guess Muzzammil knew what to do about his wife since Sharia allows husbands to beat their wives for being disobedient.

It is also good to see that the National Organization of Women and other womens rights groups are finally starting to speak out against the honor killings and violence against women in the Muslim community. Faster please.

The story is also starting to generate international press and more media coverage as details of the brutal murder come to light.

Women on Women reports the details, but seems to get the concept of honor killings and who is actually shamed wrong.

Indeed it’s not, but often times these beheadings and other such crimes are often also ironically referred to as "honor killings" when linked to the Muslim culture. The irony? They bring dishonor upon the perpetrators, their families, their communities and their religion.

The perpetrators, families and their communities do not feel any dishonor from murdering those who have violated the Islamic laws - disobeying the husband being a prime example. They believe they have done nothing wrong. It is wishful thinking and projection to write that they are somehow dishonored.

If honor killings truly brought dishonor to those who committed the acts, the families involved, and the greater community, you would see more outreach and outspoken opposition to the practice, but for much of the world, this is a way of life that is not going to change because it comes from the Koran itself and if it is written in the Koran, any attempts to alter the definitions or meanings can lead to being threatened with apostasy (itself punishable by death).

UPDATE:
AP reports that Muzzammil Hassan was a gentle sort of guy and dismisses the idea of this being an honor killing because it is uncommon in the US. Sadly, the AP doesn't quite follow the growing trend of honor killings in the US and that the victims aren't always wives, but the daughters and girlfriends - but the brutal deaths are no less horrific. Charles at LGF highlights a very damning portrait of honor killings, the motivations, and the rising numbers in the West and how Islam plays a strong role in a report by Phyllis Chesler.

You Don't Say: Obama Tempers Expectations Over Porkfest Fixing Economy

So, now that President Obama is set to sign the multi-trillion dollar porkfest into law on Tuesday, he's already attempting to manage expectations that the porkfest will not turn around the economy right away.

He's already laying the groundwork for another porkfest package just in case the economy doesn't improve even modestly under the weight of the current porkfest.

That's the Democrats' solution to all problems. Throw massive amounts of money at the problem and pray that something sticks. Oh, and just hours after saying that this bill needed to be passed by Congress to save the economy, President Obama will now not sign it until Tuesday? I guess he realizes he needs to get the press coverage that a weekday brings, not simply signing it into law on a holiday weekend when fewer people are paying attention. It was a hurry up and pass the bill without reading the damned thing so it can sit until such time that the press coverage will be maximized. Since it wasn't going to be signed until Tuesday at the earliest, Congressional Democrats - Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi rammed through this bill with a minimum of debate that would have exposed the extent of this fiscally irresponsible and foolish legislation.

Even the New York Times was forced to admit yesterday that the tax cuts in the bill hold out the only hope for a modest boost in the immediate future; the rest of the porkfest may generate jobs years into the future.

The $787 billion plan — a combination of fast-acting tax cuts and longer-term government spending on public works projects, education, health care, energy and technology — was smaller than Democrats first proposed.

Yet, Obama and the Democrats cut the level of tax cuts to trim the massive bloated porkfest down below $800 billion initial outlay, to amounts that Democrats like Michelle Obama had previously derided as being insufficient to stimulate the economy when President Bush offered them up last year.

Meanwhile, the economic illiterates in Congress are now looking to take over the banking industry and the carmakers are now claiming they need yet another multi-billion dollar bailout because they can't make ends meet and agree with the unions on a modification of contracts that would save jobs. Providing the bailout to the automakers was the height of folly, and Congress will again bail out Chrysler and General Motors in a futile attempt to curry favor with automakers and unions that cannot and will not adapt to current economic realities. Ford has thus far avoided taking any federal monies, and if I were in the market for a car, I would seriously consider them on that basis.

You Don't Say: Pelosi Worried About Murtha Corruption Probe

You could have fooled me that the House Democrats were worried about corruption and the appearance of impropriety. After all, they have been extremely busy defending Rep. Charles Rangel from a GOP effort to strip him of his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee as an ethics panel investigates his tax evasion and ethics violations.

They have been busy ignoring Rep. William Jefferson's freezer stuffed with cold cash that is now the subject of a federal bribery and corruption investigation.

And now, they're worried about the reprehensible Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania who was reelected to his seat despite showing utter disdain to his own constituents and the residents of rural Pennsylvania and the ongoing concerns about his ties to lobbyist groups and improprieties.

It turns out that there was good reason to be concerned about this former unindicted coconspirator of the ABSCAM case. The FBI is busy looking through the records of close associates.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are “concerned” by a widening criminal probe that may involve Rep. John P. Murtha, but sources close to the leadership say there’s no move afoot to force him out as chairman of the powerful Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

“We are watching to see what happens,” said a senior House Democratic aide. “At this point, there is nothing for us to do. There is not a clear indication yet that Mr. Murtha has done anything wrong or that the Justice Department is targeting him in any way, so there is no reason to take any action.”

The new worries about Murtha come in the wake of news of a November raid of the PMA Group, a lobbying firm with close ties to the veteran Pennsylvania Democrat.

PMA was founded in 1989 by former Murtha aide Paul Magliocchetti and was ranked the 10th biggest lobbying firm in Washington as recently as last year. But a source close to the firm said it has “disintegrated” over the past few days, with Magliocchetti heading off to potential retirement in Florida and other top lobbyists there busy starting up their own new company.

Several sources told Politico on Wednesday that Magliocchetti has hired a criminal defense attorney to represent him in the probe, but attempts to reach Magliocchetti for comment were unsuccessful.

Note too that they're not so concerned that they would strip him of his chairmanship either.

This is getting to be a regular pattern with the Democrats since Pelosi took over. She regularly looks the other way as her caucus engages in corrupt and unethical practices, and continues to appoint these individuals to high ranking posts.

You Don't Say: Gaza Death Toll Inflated

Despite all the hysterical rantings of the anti-Israel groups, anti-Semites, and others who considered Israel's Operation Cast Lead to be the start of a massacre, genocide, or worse, the facts always seem to show something quite different.

The UN, as usual, swallowed the Hamas line and proffered casualty figures that have absolutely no bearing on reality.

The number of Palestinians killed in Operation Cast Lead did not exceed five or six hundred, Lorenzo Cremonesi, a correspondent for Italy's Corriere della sera reported on Thursday.

Cremonesi based his report on tours of hospitals in the Gaza Strip and on interviews with families of casualties. He also assessed the number of wounded to be far lower than 5,000, the number quoted by Hamas and repeated by the UN and the Red Cross in Gaza.

"It is sufficient to visit several hospitals [in the Gaza Strip] to understand that the numbers don't add up," he wrote.

In the European hospital in Rafah, one of the facilities which would presumably be filled with wounded from the "war of the tunnels," many beds were empty, according to Cremonesi. A similar situation was noted in the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, and in the privately-run Amal Hospital Cremonesi reported that only five out 150 beds were occupied.

Cremonesi interviewed Gazans who echoed Israel's insistence of how Hamas gunmen used civilians as human shields. One Gazan recalled civilians in Gaza shouting at Hamas and Islamic Jihad men, "Go away, go away from here! Do you want the Israelis to kill us all? Do you want our children to die under their bombs? Take your guns and missiles with you."

"Traitors, collaborators with Israel, spies of Fatah, cowards! The soldiers of the holy war will punish you. And in any case you will all die, like us. Fighting the Zionist Jews we are all destined for paradise. Do you not wish to die with us?" the religious fanatics of Hamas reportedly responded.

If the Israelis truly killed and injured as many as claimed, the Gaza hospitals would be overflowing with casualties.

They are not.

If the Israelis truly killed as many civilians as claimed, there would be evidence of such - the cemeteries would be overflowing with hundreds of new burials over the usual numbers.

They are not.

Of course, Hamas was using human shields and civilians did die in the conflict, but those victims were killed not by Israel but by Hamas - who put those civilians into harms way not only by carrying out a rocket war against Israel, but by purposefully using civilian areas to attack Israeli communities. Rockets fired from civilian areas, schools, and even UN facilities.

Gazan witnesses say as much, and that is undeniable. These Gazans know that Hamas would surely kill them if they say the wrong thing, so what is their rationale to lie? Many instead remain quiet because of Hamas intimidation.

The death toll in Gaza was likely no more than 500 or 600, the majority of which were Hamas thugs.

"The number of deceased stands at no more than 500 to 600. Most of them are youths between the ages of 17 to 23 who were recruited to the ranks of Hamas, who sent them to the slaughter," according to the newspaper article.

The doctor wished to remain unidentified, out of fear for his life.

Most of those killed were teenagers who Hamas armed so that they could go out with a bang.

Where is the UN to investigate these claims? They'll much rather find fault with Israel since Israel isn't exactly slinking about Gaza during Operation Cast Lead without uniforms. Hamas purposefully hid their uniforms once Israel started air operations against Hamas, and only when Israel began withdrawing forces from Gaza did the uniforms come back out.

For all the talk about disproportionate force, it sure looks like Israel got their targets alright - which also explains why Hamas is busy trying to kill and intimidate collaborators. Israel had excellent intel.

This is the same kind of agitprop as the Jenin hoax, where Palestinians initially claimed that Israel leveled and killed thousands, but the real death toll turned out to be 54, with 45 being terrorists. The UN in that case also carried terrorist figures long after they had been debunked.

UPDATE:
Once again, the UN serves up the indignation against Israel, while ignoring that Hamas initiated the conflict by firing rockets at Israel during the so-called ceasefire (broken by Hamas 5 days in) and then carried out war crimes against Gazans and Israelis alike - by firing on civilians from within civilian areas without care to protect civilians from undue casualties. Hamas purposefully sought to inflate the casualties, and yet the UN is overly concerned because Israel destroyed buildings Hamas used to carry out their war against Israel.

UPDATE:
Israeli officials dismiss the report by the Italian paper, claiming that about 1,300 were killed, of which 700 were Hamas thugs.

The IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration has already compiled a list with 900 names of Palestinians killed during the operation, out of which 750 are believed to be Hamas operatives.

The IDF estimated that two-thirds of those killed were gunmen affiliated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian terror factions. At least 500 are believed to have been members of Hamas's military wing.

Hamas, defense officials said, purposely covered up the number of dead and on Sunday claimed that only 48 members of its military wing had been killed. Many bodies belonging to Hamas operatives were being stored - officials said - in the morgue in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

UPDATE:
I think the truth is somewhere in between. I think we're going to find that most were indeed Hamas thugs and that the death toll is lower than Israel believed, but higher than the figures quoted by the Italian paper.

Where the Italian paper gets it right is that the Hamas thugs purposefully inflated the body count by using human shields, forcing attacks from civilian areas, and otherwise engaging in multiple war crimes.

Of course, the UN will claim that it's all Israel's fault, and they're already complaining and whining and seething as they've bought into the Hamas line.

You Don't Say: Hamas Acts Like a Bunch of Terrorists

They're busy crowing about how they defeated the Israelis. They're claiming that they destroyed tons of Israeli tanks, killed a bunch of Israeli soldiers and that only a few of their own were killed in the fighting.

Lying about casualties, who was killed, and purposefully took off their uniforms so as to blend in and avoid having their numbers counted or killed nearly as easily by IDF pinpoint strikes.

It's all just another day at the office for Hamas.

The journalist quoted a top Hamas operative as saying that Hamas lost less than 10 percent of its weapons and ammunition in the past three weeks. "Despite the severe blows, Hamas remains as defiant as ever and it's believed that they still have a lot of weapons," the journalist said.

Various sources in the Gaza Strip, including medics, journalists and a few Hamas supporters are convinced that the movement is not telling the truth about its human losses and the damage done to its security and civilian infrastructure.

One medic said he believes at least 250 Hamas militiamen died in the fighting, while a journalist put the figure at over 400.

The sources agreed, nevertheless, that it was difficult to come up with accurate figures because it was difficult to distinguish between a civilian and a Hamas militiaman.

According to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, on the first day of the war Hamas ordered its gunmen to take off their uniforms to avoid being detected by the IDF. The Hamas gunmen who participated in the fighting against the IDF were all dressed as civilians and the majority arrived at hospitals without their weapons or any other signs revealing their status as gunmen.

Fatah representatives in the West Bank claim that the majority of Hamas's fighters were actually hiding during the IDF operation and had not taken part in the fighting.

They pointed out that only a few hundred gunmen belonging to Hamas and other armed factions, including Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, and Islamic Jihad's Al-Quds Brigades, took part in the fighting after the IDF sent ground forces into the Gaza Strip.

No one will be able to figure out how many terrorists died because it doesn't serve the Palestinian cause to find out just how many terrorists were part of the total. Hamas purposefully hid behind civilians so as to mask their true numbers and to inflate the civilian body count in more ways than one.

Of course, all those uniforms are back on display. Smile for the cameras because Israel is again taking notes.



The one thing the terrorists did get right is that Israel stopped short of destroying Hamas, so they can claim that as a victory. Israel didn't stop Hamas from firing rockets or mortars into Israel, and that remains a serious threat. Israel has to adopt a zero-tolerance approach to further terrorist attacks to thwart Hamas from ratcheting up the violence just as it did during the 6-month hudna, which Hamas violated beginning on the fifth day. Hundreds of rocket attacks later, and Israel finally responded. And that was years after Hamas began its rocket war against Israel.

You Don't Say: Rangel Broke House Rules On Trips

None of this is surprising. Democrat Charles Rangel openly flouts laws and rules, whether it's tax law or House ethics rules. His latest screwup? Trips to the Caribbean appear to have broken House ethics rules.

For at least five of the last six years, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and several other members of the Congressional Black Caucus have spent a few days each fall at a different luxurious Caribbean island resort.

The trip’s official mission is to facilitate business and diplomatic relationships between the region and the United States.

This year’s trip took place Nov. 6 to 9, the weekend after the election, on the sun-swept 10-acre Sonesta Maho Beach Resort in St. Martin. The ethics committee approved the Caribbean trip, as it has done for several years, but new information uncovered about its corporate funding raises questions about whether the trip violates a two-year-old ethics rule passed after Democrats regained the House.

The New York Carib News Foundation, a nonprofit affiliated with a newspaper geared toward the city’s Caribbean community, is listed on members’ travel disclosure documents as the trip’s sponsor.

When the nonprofit’s CEO, Karl Rodney, sought ethics committee approval for the trip, as the new rules require, he checked a box on the form certifying that the foundation “has not accepted from any other source funds earmarked directly or indirectly to finance any aspect of the trip.”

After House Democrats regained the majority on a campaign of draining the Washington swamp, they passed tougher new rules governing privately funded trips for members. The ethics rules bar corporations or other entities that employ or retain a registered lobbyist from paying for multi-day trips, either directly or indirectly.

Yet two spokeswomen for American Airlines, the largest carrier from the U.S. to the Caribbean, told The Hill that the company recently provided in-kind donations of tickets for Rangel and five other members of Congress to fly from their districts to St. Martin, a tropical island in the northeast Caribbean. According to ethics experts, the American Airlines donation of tickets for members to use for a specific trip is a clear violation of House ethics rules governing travel. American Airlines has spent more than $6 million on lobbying in the first three-quarters of this year.

He and his fellow Democrats have broken the House ethics rules for five of the last six years. It wasn't until some journalists began digging into Rangel's actions following the revelations that Rangel was evading taxes on multiple instances that we're beginning to learn the audacious scope of Rangel's malfeasance.

I'm not holding my breath to see if House Democrats take action against Rangel. They have refused to force him to step down as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which sets tax policy for the nation despite being a chronic evader of taxes by failing to report taxes on multiple instances and across a wide range of tax issues (real estate, imputed income, rental income, etc.). They've refused to force him to step down despite breaking House ethics rules.

The rules simply have not applied to Rangel for years, and as we've come to learn, they don't apply to many members of the House, particularly if they're Democrats. Had these been Republicans, the scandal would be front page news and demands for his resignation would have been made loudly by House Democrats. Here, it's the silence of the caucus that is deafening. House Speaker Pelosi, a Democrat, has professed that this would be the most ethical Congress ever, and rose to power on the heels of scandals that laid the Republicans low. Nice to see that she's found ways to scrape the bottom of the barrel even lower.

Iran Continues Annihilation Rhetoric Against Israel

This falls into the you don't say category because the Iranians have been at it for years on end. A study finds that the Iranians continue to operate a misinformation campaign against Israel.

Meanwhile, more ominously, the Iranians are calling on the Lebanese people to unite in conflict against Israel.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran believes that the power of all Lebanese groups should be at the service of the country's national unity to counter the danger of the Zionist regime," Khamenei told visiting Lebanese President Michel Suleiman.

Khamenei, lauding Suleiman's support of Islamic militancy and his efforts to establish unity in Lebanon, promised that Iran would always side with Beirut, stressing that Lebanon enjoys high significance despite its small geographical limits. One such instance of "exemplary" coexistence of different religious groups in Lebanon, he said, was the "historical victory" over the Israel.

"Over the past 60 years, none of the Muslim and Arab states have been able to face the Zionist regime, but people in Lebanon managed to break this myth and drive the Israeli army out of their soil," he said.

Khamenei added that Lebanon has turned into a role model for other Muslim nations due to its "resistance" to Israeli "aggressions," saying, "During the 33-day war period, many Muslims in the Islamic and Arab states chanted slogans in support of Lebanese Hizbullah, especially...Nasrallah."

With Iran's proxy army Hizbullah already subverting and coopting the government and operating in flagrant violation of UN SCR 1701 as a militia in Southern Lebanon, the Iranians know it is a matter of time before Hizbullah has completely poisoned the political landscape and driven out the reasonable and moderate Lebanese in favor of once again launching a devastating war against Israel.

Bearing special blame for this disastrous situation is none other than Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, his defense minister Amir Peretz, IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, and foreign minister, Tzipi Livni who thought that letting the UN police Southern Lebanon would ensure Israel's long term security. Instead of fighting Hizbullah and defeating them soundly, they dithered and delayed dealing a crushing blow on Hizbullah and its rat lines into Syria by avoiding attacking the Bek'aa Valley terror infrastructure and the Hizbullah leadership.

All it did was let Hizbullah off the hook and have allowed them to regroup and rearm to the point that they're far more powerful and well-off than they were at the end of the Hizbullah War in 2006. Hizbullah has the Lebanese government in their clutches and have built up Southern Lebanon into an armed fortress from which they can carry out their long term war plans against Israel at the time and place of their choosing.

Meanwhile, it should come as no surprise either that Hizbullah is expanding its global reach into Latin America. You can thank Iran for that as well, and that bodes badly for US and Israeli interests worldwide as the Islamists are not content with simply expanding their presence, but to subjugate the nonbelievers amongst them.

You Don't Say: Ayers and Obama Were Close Friends

You don't say:

In a new afterword to his memoir, 1960s radical William Ayers describes himself as a "family friend" of President-elect Barack Obama and writes that the campaign controversy over their relationship was an effort by Obama's political enemies to "deepen a dishonest narrative" about the candidate.

Ayers describes phone threats and hate e-mail he received during the campaign, and he bemoans Obama's guilt by association.

During the campaign, Ayers' friendship with Obama was a favorite subject of conservative bloggers and talk show hosts who insisted the two were closer than the candidate was admitting. Ayers' new description of the relationship seems to contradict Obama's statements.

Obama had dismissed Ayers as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" and "somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know."

How again was that media coverage of Obama's friends and associates to figure out who's who? They decided that it was more important to find out who was really pregnant in the Palin family (and throw more than a few rumors out there about whose baby Trig really was) than to shine light on the all too cozy relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground terrorist who was mainstreamed by the Chicago political machine and academia.

I can't wait for Obama to throw Ayers under the bus again; to say that he wasn't the Ayers he knew; or some other such blathering.

As I've been saying from the outset, Obama's associations go to his character and judgment. He had no problem associating with Ayers, and it should have given pause to people voting for him, especially in light of Ayers wistfully unrepentant view of his active terrorist days. He's no less revolutionary in his views now, but it should have been a red flag to Obama to consider associating with other people.

UPDATE:
Chris Cuomo gave a fawning interview of Ayers on ABC News today. Nice. It would have been nice if Cuomo had asked Ayers of his rousing support for Sirhan Sirhan in the Weather Underground manifesto Prairie Fire. Sirhan murdered Robert F. Kennedy, who was closely related to Cuomo's former sister in law Kerry Kennedy (who was married to Cuomo's brother Andrew (who is currently New York's Attorney General)).

UPDATE:
Ayers claims that he never injured or killed anyone with his terror attacks. I beg to differ. He intended to kill soldiers at Fort Dix, when the bomb he designed blew up killing three of his fellow terrorists, including his girlfriend at the time. His terrorists firebombed the home of a judge, which nearly killed the judge and his family.

Weather Underground terrorists, along with Black Panthers, murdered two state troopers and an armored car guard as part of the Brinks armored car heist in Nanuet, New York. That heist was meant to fund further terror attacks, but the plan was thwarted. Ayers and his partner Bernadine Dohrn became guardians for Kathy Boudin's children.

UPDATE:
Hot Air has more.

UPDATE:
Ayers and his media friends are all too busy trying to whitewash his connections to Obama. There is absolutely no way he can say any of this with a straight face. After all, Ayers was there at the start of Obama's political career, gave him his shot as head of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and it's hard to believe that these are mere coincidences.

Little Known About Obama's New York Years

You don't say.

When 23-year-old Barack Obama, then a recent Columbia graduate, walked into the office of the New York Public Interest Research Group after answering an ad for a job, his supervisor had a warning for him.

“I told him he would make less than $10,000 a year,” said Eileen Hershenov, who was the downstate campus coordinator for NYPIRG. “He laughed and told me that was a step up for him.”

As president-elect Obama prepares to move into the White House, relatively little is known about his five years in New York in the early ’80s. It was a period of transition for Obama, a time of soul-searching and uncertainty. It was also when Obama first worked full-time as a community organizer, a role that would define his young life and help shape his political outlook.

As a project coordinator for NYPIRG on the City College of New York campus in Harlem for three months in 1985, Obama spent hours with students in the trailer that served as the group’s office just below 140th Street and Convent Avenue, giving lessons on how to organize rallies and letter-writing campaigns, how to speak to legislators and lobby for change in public policy.

Former colleagues recall a “fabulously intelligent” and confident young man who was intensely interested in the idea of creating political change from the ground up, an idea that would resurface years later in his meteoric political rise.

Whose fault is it that we know so little about Obama's time in New York? That would fall on the media, whose lack of curiosity about Obama's past, his associations, and views, may have serious consequences going forward as President.

Pres-Elect Obama's New Chief of Staff Has Freddie Mac Issues

If he had a (R) after his name, the media might have made more of this. But Rahm Emanuel isn't a Republican. He's a Democrat enforcer that President Elect Barack Obama chose to be his Chief of Staff.

Emanuel is a tough guy, but he's got skeletons in his closet that should give people pause as to Obama's choice and judgment.

Emanuel was on the board of Freddie Mac when Freddie Mac was cooking the books. He didn't blow the whistle on the situation or the fact that the entity was about to go broke over the subprime mess, which he and his fellow Democrats chose to ignore for years in the name of affordable housing. As ABC News now reports:

President-elect Barack Obama's newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot "red flags," according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com.

According to a complaint later filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freddie Mac, known formally as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002.

No one has accused Emanuel of wrongdoing in those complaints, but one really ought to question his judgment and inability to note the serious problems facing Freddie Mac.

Jammie also points out this particular issue with Emanuel's tax situation. Apparently, he doesn't pay any property taxes because he's declared his home the office of a charitable foundation. Nearby homes of similar size pay upwards of $6,000 a year in property taxes. Emanuel pays nothing.

Of course, I've pointed out previously that Emanuel has issues stemming from what he knew about the Tim Mahoney mess in Florida. He was responsible for getting Mahoney elected, and then learned about the affairs, and worked to keep the news from leaking. I'm curious as to why the media isn't digging deeper to find out what Emanuel knew about that situation.

UPDATE:
Hot Air notes the possible civil and criminal liability facing Emanuel if it can be shown he signed off on the bogus numbers generated by Freddie Mac.

This is no small matter. Had this happened when Sarbanes-Oxley was in effect, Emanuel would have had to sign off on those numbers under penalty of perjury. He could be liable for criminal prosecution. As it is, his actions and omissions as a board member may still result in civil and criminal liability, if the SEC discovers that he had a hand in the fraud committed at Freddie Mac, or if Emanuel knew about it and failed to act to stop it.

You Don't Say

This is going to be a new feature here. It's when media outlets report news that is so stunningly obvious, that you have to wonder what took people so long to realize something was wrong.

Today's story relates to the ongoing saga of the LIRR disability scam, which has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in disability payments paid out to LIRR workers who claimed they had disabilities, and the federal board responsible for the disbursements rubber stamping the claims.

We now learn that there was absolutely no reason that any of those people should have gotten free lifetime passes to state park golf courses.

New York State’s parks officials have determined that there is no legal justification for hundreds of retired Long Island Rail Road workers on disability to be playing golf free in state-owned parks with passes intended for severely disabled people.

The laws and regulation governing the passes do not mention railroad workers with occupational disabilities, Eileen Larrabee, a spokeswoman for the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, said on Thursday. “They made a leap at some point along the line.”

The parks agency has not yet decided whether to rescind the passes or take other action, Ms. Larrabee added, saying she hoped to have “something more definitive to say in the next couple weeks.”

State park officials began reviewing the Access Pass program after The New York Times reported in September that in recent years more than 90 percent of the railroad’s career employees retired early and qualified for federal disability payments, which allowed them to play golf free.

Indeed, many Long Island golfers would love to be able to play Bethpage Black, one of the most famous courses in the US, if not the world, let alone play it for free. That's exactly what this perk enabled supposedly disabled LIRR retirees to do.

So far, officials have identified 215 people who hold Access Passes in a category assigned to railroad retirees, and an additional, unknown number improperly in the Social Security category.

Here's the fees at Bethpage Black:
Reservation Fee $4
Weekday Fee (18 Holes) Residents:$50.00
Non-Residents: $100.00
Weekend Fee (18 Holes) Residents: $60.00
Non-Residents: $120.00

The fees at the other four Bethpage golf courses are less, but still substantial.

There's no word on how often these people used the free perks, and their ultimate cost to taxpayers.

UPDATE:
Instapundit links. Thanks!