With Rep. Pelosi’s picks announced today, the SuperCongress is set. From The Associated Press:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s appointment Thursday of three Democrats to Congress’ new debt-reduction supercommittee completes the roster of a panel whose members are already being tugged in competing directions.

Pelosi selected Reps. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina and Xavier Becerra of California, who both are members of the party’s House leadership, and Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee. The choices bring racial diversity to the supercommittee because Clyburn is black and Becerra is Hispanic.

The 12-member panel, divided evenly among Democrats and Republicans, has until Thanksgiving to propose $1.5 trillion in 10-year budget savings. If it does not propose a package or if Congress doesn’t approve it, $1.2 trillion in automatic budget cuts will be triggered.

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From Politico:

Rep. James Clyburn and a group of House Democrats are urging President Barack Obama to invoke the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling if Congress can’t come up with a satisfactory plan before the Tuesday deadline.

Clyburn, the third-ranking House Democrat, said Wednesday that if the president is delivered a bill to raise the debt ceiling for only a short period of time, he should instead it and turn to the phrase in the Constitution that says the validity of the U.S. government’s debt “shall not be questioned.”

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As the Pigford investigation continues, it is important to note that we have demonstrated in our Pigford Report that there is massive fraud in the Pigford I settlement, but you have yet to hear a pro-Pigford politician admit to that fact.  To this day, President Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack maintains there are, at most, 10 cases of fraud. Big Government showed two videos of black farmers alleging that Congressman Sanford Bishop not only knew about the fraud in Pigford I, but also instructed the black farmers who brought the information to light to keep quiet as long as “the money was flowing.”

It’s important to note that Eddie Slaughter is not just a black farmer, he is the Vice President of one of the largest black farmer advocacy groups in America, the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association.

After seeing the BigGovernment.com interview, Congressman Bishop, clearly upset with the video revelation, made the following admission to his local paper, the Albany Herald yesterday:

“Yes, I am aware that there is fraud in the program, that’s why anti-fraud provisions were written into the settlement,” Bishop said Thursday morning “My job was to help secure funding for constituents who had been discriminated against by the USDA. It’s not my job to monitor fraud in the program. I can’t assume responsibility for fraud. You can’t lay that at my feet.”

“This is ridiculous. It’s not my job to determine who is a qualified claimant or not, or who gets paid or who doesn’t get paid.”

“I’ve worked with Eddie Slaughter for more than 15 years.”

We now have an admission from a prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and a co-sponsor of Pigford legislation, that he was not only told by a black farmer that the Pigford I payout process was “rife with fraud,” but also that as a member of Congress there was nothing he could do about it. (more…)

Mary Curtis at PoliticsDaily:

Though it may be a mix-up or a misunderstanding, it doesn’t look good. On the tape, Norton notes that colleagues on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee have already received donations. “I’m handling the largest economic development project in the United States now,” she says. “I’m simply candidly calling to ask for a contribution.” She then helpfully supplies an address.

The call could be examined to see if it breaks House ethics rules, and could not come at a worse time for Democrats trying to maintain their majority in the House and Senate in November midterm elections. Ethics violations by Republicans helped get Democrats elected in the last two election cycles when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to “drain the swamp.”

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Last year, President Obama promised to focus “every single day” on getting Americans back to work:

“My commitment to you, the American people, is that I will focus every single day on how we can get people back to work, and how we can build an economy that continues to make real the promise of America for generations to come.”

Of course, today the President seemed to take a mulligan on his jobs’ vigil, opting instead to do a taping of “The View” and attending a few fundraisers in NYC.  But not to worry, just yesterday, one of the President’s staunchest allies, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) introduced legislation to amend the Stimulus legislation to promote an obviously important component of sustained economic growth:

By Mr. CLYBURN:

H.R. 5878. A bill to amend the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to make funds and tax benefit available to assist job creation and workforce diversification in the golf industry, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Ways and Means, and in addition to the Committee on Education and Labor, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.

Of course, in a certain way, this makes perfect sense.

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With the South Carolina Democrat Senate nomination going to no-job, no-money, living-at-home-with-mom Alvin Greene, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) is now calling for an investigation, hinting that Greene may even be a ‘Republican plant’.

There were some real shenanigans going on in the South Carolina primary. I don’t know if he was a Republican plant; he was someone’s plant.

While we applaud Congressman Clyburn’s attempt to maintain the integrity of the political process, where the hell was he last week…?

Stung by a series of inquiries, nearly half the members of the Congressional Black Caucus want to scale back the aggressive ethics procedures that Democrats trumpeted after gaining control of Congress.

Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, and 19 fellow black lawmakers in the all-Democratic caucus quietly introduced a resolution last week that would restrict the powers of the new independent Office of Congressional Ethics. The office, formed by Congress in 2008, is run by a panel of private citizens.

The message from Clyburn and others seems to be they want clean candidates coming in, who can get as dirty as they want later (and there will be no investigations to worry about).

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A member of the terrorist support group Code Pink assaults then Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice at a Congressional hearing, Oct. 24, 2007. AP Photo by Charles Dharapak

Code Pink co-founder and Democrat activist Jodie Evans and President Barack Obama, Oct. 15, 2009.

[Note: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink and its co-founder Jodie Evans. Click here to read earlier articles.]

House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (SC)  recently accused Republicans of “aiding and abetting terrorism” because of their support for the Tea Party movement. With all due respect, Rep. Clyburn needs to clean out his own party first before he has standing to say anything on the subject.

Top Democrat Party activists Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin, through their group Code Pink, have spent the past eight years terrorizing soldiers, their families and public officials on the homefront while working with terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism abroad. Rather than being condemned and disowned, Code Pink is embraced by President Barack Obama and leading Democrats while being celebrated by the media.

The Code Pink Democrats have harassed wounded soldiers and their families at military hospitals in Washington, D.C. and San Diego; they have repeatedly targeted military recruiting centers for abuse; they cruelly taunted the children of military families at a White House Halloween party; they have terrorized government officials at their homes and they have led a campaign for the kidnapping of former President Bush and his wife Laura (for this they enlisted the support of the Muslim Brotherhood).

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Barack Obama came into office with a promise of ushering in a new post-racial era.  One year into his term and Chris Matthews has already declared, “Mission Accomplished!”  He forgot Obama was black, you see.  America is now post-racial!  Sadly, the facts tell a very different story.  Over the last year, we have witnessed a proliferation of indiscriminate accusations of racism, or a period of what I like to refer to as hyper-racialism.

Paul Krugman insured that 2009 got off to a fast start when it came to race-mongering, writing on January 1st that the GOP is the “party of racial backlash.”  It turns out, according to the Nobel Prize bearing economist, that skeptics of big government aren’t concerned about upholding the constitution or protecting liberties.  Oh, no.  Our real motivation for opposing liberalism is that it means giving money to “Those People.” Wink, wink.

Paul Krugman must have been on to something, because as we saw throughout the rest of the year, pretty much everything said by the right turned out to be code for racism.

MSNBC’s Carlos Watson wondered whether “socialist is becoming a code word.”  CNN questioned whether there were “racial overtones” at the Tea Parties, while David Shuster dubbed them an “intolerance festival.” Janeane Garofalo out and out pronounced all Tea Party attendees as racist.

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The Senate earmarks $500,000 for itself; Money will be spent to promote Senators’ appearances

House of Representative’s expense reports now online

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent $2,993 in taxpayer money on flowers in just a few months and House Majority Whip James Clyburn spent hundreds of dollars on donuts

Congress steers millions of taxpayer dollars to campaign donors’ pet projects including an earmark for “mammal awareness”

The Justice Department has instructed federal agencies to honor contracts with ACORN despite ban on funding passed by Congress and signed by the President

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