Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring to the attention of the House a problem that exists, frankly, in all 50 States and is having a dramatic impact not only on individual States but having an impact tragically on our national security--the problem that tobacco excise taxes, which are levied State by State, have had the unwitting result of having a great incentive for people to smuggle tobacco over State lines. This is happening because of a weakness in the Federal law that makes it a misdemeanor to do so.

Let me explain to you exactly what happens. In a State like New York, for example, the New York State excise tax for each pack of cigarettes is $2.75. New York City adds another $1.50 to that tax. So the base tax on cigarettes in New York is the combination of $2.75 in the State, $1.50 in the city.

If you go to, say, North Carolina or another State that has a lower tax, there's an enormous amount of incentive for someone to buy the tobacco in a State like North Carolina, sell it in New York on the black market, or sell it on the Internet and wind up saving a great deal of money on that float between the two tax rates.

Now this is illegal under the Jenkins Act. However, it's hardly ever enforced, and when you ask folks at the ATF why it's not enforced, they say quite simply, because the Jenkins Act is too weak. It only makes it a misdemeanor to do these things.

What has become clear in recent months, though, and in recent years, according to the Government Accountability Office, according to the FBI, is that not only are people trying to make a couple of bucks doing this, but terrorist organizations have been funded.

According to a GAO investigation, what has happened is that tobacco is being bought in North Carolina where the tax is only five cents a pack and being resold in Michigan where the tax is 75 cents a pack. They're taking that extra 50 cents which, when you consider cases and cases, truckloads and truckloads, and where do the profits go? $1.5 million was shipped overseas to Lebanon to fund Hezbollah. This is just one example.

FBI Director Robert Mueller, when he testified about this problem before the Senate, said the following:

``Terrorists now increasingly have to rely on criminal organizations to travel from country to country for false identifications, for smuggling, being smuggled in or out of a country. They have to rely on other criminal organizations for money laundering. We have had a number of cases where Hezbollah, for instance, has utilized cigarette smuggling to generate revenues to support Hezbollah.''

In this GAO report that revealed this information, both DOJ-- Department of Justice--and ATF suggested that if violations of the Jenkins Act were felonies instead of misdemeanors, U.S. Attorneys' Offices might be less reluctant to prosecute.

Well, I'm standing here to recommend that we do just that. We in the Crime Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee recently had a hearing on my legislation which would do just that. It would raise the stakes on the Jenkins Act, and it would do something else. It would say that no longer can you transfer tobacco through the mail. In order for this selling to be done in a truly efficient way, you don't pack up a truck and drive it across lines; you get an Internet Web site and you offer to transport it over State lines using the mail service.

Now you can't use FedEx, you can't use UPS, and you can't use DHL. Why? Well, because they have all signed a compact, essentially a consent order saying they refuse to carry it. The only way to mail tobacco is through the United States Postal Service. So an additional thing the legislation would do would make that illegal.

This is a serious problem. As the tax goes up, as the difference between the State taxes goes up, it's no longer nickels and dimes, it's millions of dollars, millions of dollars that's going to black market tobacco that's funding nefarious activities and funding terrorism, and we should stop it.

Mr. Speaker, the time has come for the United States Senate to free the COPS program. We here in this body, by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, voted to reauthorize the single greatest legislative weapon frankly ever passed by Congress to help reduce crime.

It reauthorized the highly successful COPS program, authorizing the hiring of another 50,000 new cops, authorizing hiring of special terrorism cops for cities like New York that have cops that specialize simply in combating terrorism.

Now, that same bill is held hostage in the Senate, frankly, by my Republican colleagues. The time has come for us to realize that if there has been one program that has been democratic, with a small D, meaning it's had beneficial effects all throughout the country, it's been the COPS program. Whether it's a small sheriff's department or a large police department like New York City, the program has been a success.

We should keep on pushing. There are a lot of things we disagree on, but frankly, this should be one that unifies us. This will give us a chance to modernize this program, get some money into the pipeline in States and localities so that they can go ahead and hire more police officers and continue the successes we have had reducing crime.

Madam Speaker, several months ago, the Kingsbridge Heights Rehabilitation Center in the West Bronx unilaterally decided to stop making payments to the health care fund for its employees. Before some of my colleagues ``tisk tisk, well that's just the free market at work''--as the Daily News and their award-winning columnist, Errol Louis, pointed out--this center has made $5.2 million in profits last year and its CAO, Helen Sieger, made $700,000 in salary--all of it paid for by Medicaid funds, our tax dollars.

Audrey Smith-Campbell and 220 of her colleagues decided they weren't going to take it; they were going to go on strike. Audrey Smith- Campbell was not a union activist or an ideologue. She was for 30 years a certified nurse assistant, caring for our parents and our grandparents, giving them dignity in their most vulnerable moments. She knew she wasn't ever going to get paid what she was worth but she wanted to be paid at least enough to live on.

Audrey Smith-Campbell is dead. She died after having a severe asthma attack because she couldn't afford to pay for her medication when she was on strike. She should be honored for the way she lived--and we should all be ashamed for the reasons she died.

My colleagues, several months ago the Kingsbridge Heights Rehabilitation Center in the West Bronx unilaterally decided to stop making payments to the health care fund for its employees. Before some of my colleagues tsk-tsk, ``Well, that's just the free market at work,'' as the Daily News and their award-winning columnist, Errol Lewis, pointed out, this center has made $5.2 million in profits last year, and its CEO, Helen Sieger, made $700,000 in her salary, all of it paid for by Medicaid funds, our tax dollars.

Well, Audrey Smith Campbell and 220 of her colleagues decided they weren't going to take it, they were going to go on strike. Audrey Smith Campbell was not a union activist or an ideologue, she was, for 30 years, a certified nurse assistant caring for her parents and her grandparents, giving them dignity in their most vulnerable moments.

She knew she wasn't ever going to get paid what she's worth, but she wanted to be paid at least enough to live on. Well, Audrey Smith Campbell is dead. She died after having a severe asthma attack because she couldn't afford to pay for her medication when she was on strike. She should be honored for the way she lived, and we should all be ashamed for the reason she died.

Madam Speaker, I rise to discuss the need for additional affordable housing across the nation. Financial planners suggest that families devote 30 percent of their income to paying for housing costs. But for many families across the country such a rule of thumb sounds more like a pipe dream. According to the 2006 American Community Survey, twenty-five percent of renters across the

nation spend more than 50 percent of their income on rent. Nationwide, there are 9 million extremely low-income households but only 6 million units renting at affordable prices, leaving a shortage of 3 million affordable housing units.

In my hometown of New York City, 28 percent of renters are paying more than half of their income for rent. Keeping the Starrett City development in Brooklyn affordable is critical. Starrett City is the Nation's largest government-subsidized rental housing complex. It was designed in the 1970s as a subsidized, middle-class co-operative under New York State's Mitchell-Lama program. It is home to 12,000 residents in nearly 6,000 housing units. Most of the residents of Starrett City live on annual gross incomes of about $20,000 to $40,000 and the average subsidized rent is $200-$400.

I, along with my colleague from New York, Representative Edolphus Towns, requested that the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity hold a field hearing in New York City following an attempt to sell Starrett City that jeopardized the complex's affordability. The hearing was held in July 2007 and investigated the impact of affordable housing sales on housing costs in New York City.

Mr. Towns' legislation before the House today will allow owners and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to convert the current subsidy contracts that are in place at Starrett City into a new, 20- year Section 8 contract. This will ensure that a new owner can secure the long-term financing necessary to keep Starrett City affordable and its tenants in their homes.

Without this legislation, Starrett City's owners would likely opt out of their Section 8 contract and convert Starrett City to market-rate housing, further contributing to the lack of affordable housing in New York City.

I thank my colleague, Mr. Towns and support his legislation.

Mr. Chairman, the House has under consideration the bill H.R. 2830, the Coast Guard Reauthorization Act of 2007. Mr. Chairman, I want to highlight an amendment that I offered which has been included in Chairman Oberstar's amendment before the House. It directs the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a study of the Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York underground oil spill at Newtown Creek.

Newtown Creek is a 3.5 mile-long waterway that flows from the East River and separates the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. It is the single most polluted waterway in New York City, a legacy left by more than a century of heavy industrial activity. The creek's banks are home to the largest oil spill in the United States, which dates back to the 1950s and is estimated to be 150 percent of the size of the Exxon- Valdez spill.

In 1978, a Coast Guard patrol detected petroleum on the surface of Newtown Creek and identified a spill that spreads from the banks of the creek through the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn. Evaluations at that time identified a spill totaling 17 million gallons attributed to refineries operated along the banks of the creek by the predecessors to ExxonMobil, BP/Amoco and Chevron-Texaco. To date, 9.4 million gallons have been cleaned, primarily conducted by ExxonMobil under a 1990 consent agreement with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation that sets no timetable for completion and includes no meaningful criteria for compliance. Estimates indicate that it will take until at least 2026 to finish the remediation, almost 50 years since we discovered the spill.

Today, even though it has been 30 years since the oil spill was detected, the best information on the spill's size are estimates. While we have evidence that the spill is 17-30 million gallons, covering 55 to 70 acres, the full-extent of the spill remains unknown.

This information is critical. More than 200 observation wells and 35 recovery wells have been installed since 1978, but until we know the full extent of the problem, we may be wasting time.

In 2006, Congress directed the Environmental Protection Agency to revisit the findings of the United States Coast Guard's July 1979 report entitled ``Investigation of Underground Accumulation of Hydrocarbons along Newtown Creek.'' The 2006 study did not collect new data, determine the size or location of the spill, or conclusively assess its impact on public health and safety. It recommended reevaluating the entire plume.

Given this, the provision included in Chairman Oberstar's amendment instructs the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a full-site characterization of the Greenpoint, Brooklyn underground oil spill.

This study is to be driven by the collection of new field evidence and will not be limited to the review or co-review of existing or scheduled data collection by private parties or state and municipal entities. This new evidence includes the collection of data from new product, groundwater and soil monitoring wells, as well as from existing groundwater and soil monitoring wells at the Greenpoint Oil Spill site. This site is loosely bound by Newtown Creek on the northeast, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway on the east and south, North Henry Street on the west, and Greenpoint Avenue on the north.

Specifically, the full-site characterization is to include:

The investigation, collection, and analysis of data on the full extent of the free-product plume, or the portion of the underground petroleum plume that floats on top of the site's groundwater in its refined state or crude state, including any historic remnants currently distinct or fragmented from current spill delineations.

The investigation, collection, and analysis of data on the full extent of the dissolved phase of the plume, or the portion of the underground petroleum plume that has dissolved into the groundwater, including the geographic extent and concentrations of groundwater contamination.

The investigation, collection, and analysis of data on the full extent of soil contamination, including current and historic smear zones, or the area of soil contamination that may exist within the zone of horizontal and vertical water table fluctuations that have occurred since the time of the petroleum release.

The investigation, collection, and analysis of data on the full extent of soil vapor contamination, including vertical and horizontal pathways within the vadose zone, or the area between the land surface and the water table.

The evaluation of the entire spill area, covering both the free- product and dissolved plume, using three-phase numerical modeling techniques simulating the movement and interaction of water, oil, and vapor in a geologic medium, and use of such model to make an estimate on the length of time that will be required to recover free product, contaminated groundwater and contaminated soil from the underground plumes.

The investigation and collection of data on monthly groundwater levels over a representative area of the free product and dissolved phase contamination areas to establish background water levels.

The investigation, collection, and analysis of data on current and historic groundwater pathways in the region.

The investigation, collection, and analysis of data on the impact of tidal fluctuations on groundwater levels in the region.

The investigation, collection, and analysis of data on seepage of free product and dissolved phase groundwater into Newtown Creek along the full spill area shoreline.

Chemical analysis and description of the oil product in the Newtown Creek region in its free product phase, its dissolved phase, and its smeared phase.

An investigation of reports of oil in building foundations in the area of Roebling Street and North Eleventh Street in Brooklyn, New York, to determine whether those oil pockets are distinct from the Greenpoint Oil Spill, are historic remnants of the Greenpoint Oil Spill, or remain hydrologically connected to the Greenpoint Oil Spill.

A detailed, three-dimensional representation reflecting the latitudinal and longitudinal location of the oil spill in the Newtown Creek region and also the observed and corrected thickness of the spill.

A revised estimate of the volume and area of the spill in its three phases: free product, polluted groundwater, and smeared soils, and evaluate the remaining plume volume using corrected product thickness values.

There is no geographic limit to the study. Testing is to be performed at potential, historic migration pathways and currently or newly detected product and groundwater contamination areas near the Greenpoint oil spill. The study will begin with areas to the north, south, southeast, and east of the current published spill location. Emphasis is to be placed on the path the spill may have taken when it was subject to hydrologic pressures related to groundwater withdrawals in the early-to-mid part of the 20th Century.

As outlined in the amendment, this study is to be completed no later than one year after enactment of this law.

I would like to express my thanks to Chairman Oberstar and Chairman Cummings for their willingness to work with me on this project. Furthermore, I would like to commend Mrs. Velazquez, who represents the people of Greenpoint, and has worked closely with me on this initiative.

Additionally, I would like to thank the staff of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittees on Water Resources and Environment and Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, particularly Ryan Seiger, John Cullather, Lucinda Lessley, and Ben Webster, who have worked with me to address this critical, but often overlooked, issue.

I'd also like to thank Riverkeeper Incorporated, and its chief investigator, Basil Seggos. This organization's dedication and advice on remediating the Newtown Creek oil spill over the last six years has been an invaluable asset.

Finally, I'd like to thank Dori Friedberg of my staff for her time, work, and counsel on this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the leadership of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for their hard work shepherding through the Coast Guard Reauthorization Act of 2007, and express my strong support for this bill.

Madam Speaker and ladies and gentlemen of the House, our bipartisan efforts to isolate terrorism and terrorists and to find a lasting and secure peace in the Middle East got two setbacks this week from sadly predictable sources.

First, the United Nations appointed a human rights inspector by the name of Richard Falk whom my hometown newspaper, the Daily News, correctly called ``the nutty professor'' because of his position, as he goes into this job of overseeing human rights, that the Israelis are like Nazis. This is who they appoint to try to come to a peaceful human rights conclusion in that part of the world.

And then, sadly, we had another chapter in how not to be a former President from Jimmy Carter who goes to the Middle East, and rather than trying to pursue peace, embraces Hamas, the organization responsible for hundreds of rockets falling in Israel.

It is hard to imagine two institutions or two people that could be more of a setback than these two. The United Nations once again shows that they are unfit for their role of trying to find a moderate and lasting peace in that part of world. And, sadly, Jimmy Carter continues to write a chapter about how not to be a former President.

Madam Speaker, I rise to recognize the extraordinary work of several journalists with the Queens Courier, a weekly newspaper in New York City, who wrote a four-part series on day laborers titled ``Ghost Workers.''

Courier staff writers Peter Davis, Noah Rosenberg, and Christina Santucci, with the help of Damian Ghigliotty and Joe Hirsch, documented for 3 months the histories, labor, challenges, and lives of this invisible population. Their excellent reporting gave us a necessary glimpse into the lives of these hard-working men and women and the hardships they face as day laborers.

Through their work these journalists remind us all of the essential role that the local press play in telling the stories often missed in the commotion of cable television and the 24-hour news cycle.

The four-part series by the Queens Courier provided readers with an accurate, relevant, and illuminating window into this important but underground workforce. The series showcased their hopes for a brighter future and the obstacles they encounter, including oftentimes dangerous working conditions. The series noted that a 2003 study found that 63 percent of day workers surveyed said that their bosses did not give them protective clothing or equipment and 12 percent said that they had been injured on a job site at least once in the past year.

It is the stories that they tell which should remind us all of the ``facts on the ground''--the stories to inform and inspire our policy and legislative work. The stories that journalists like Davis, Rosenberg, Santucci, and their colleagues tell illuminate the very best what journalism can be: informational and inspiring. It can change the world by making seen the invisible, teaching the unknown, and challenging the conventional wisdom.

We all should thank The Queens Courier, their editors, and reporters Davis, Rosenberg, Santucci, Ghigliotty, and Hirsch for their incredible work.

Mr. Speaker, it is easy in the era where we look at the big numbers and the headlines in the newspaper to forget about the great acts of heroism that are going on right this very moment in Iraq and elsewhere in our world. I rise to bring to the attention of this body the heroism of Lieutenant Patrick Dowdell. He is serving with the 4th Infantry in Iraq as we speak. That is a division that has lost, unfortunately, over 135 heroic men and women. He is not the only hero in the family. His younger brother, James, recently began service in Ladder Company 174 in East Flatbush. I hope you will join with me and all of his neighbors in Breezy Point in expressing tribute to this family.

This family has one other chapter of heroism in its book. Lieutenant Kevin Dowdell, the father of both Patrick and James, was lost on September 11, a firefighter, in the World Trade Center. We join with this entire body and all of this country in commending Rose Ellen, their mother, and the acts of heroism that they are paying both here and in generations in the past. May God bless them, and God bless the United States of America.

I thank the sponsors of this legislation and of the amendment.

I think this is an opportunity for us to expand on the notion that many Americans already support, and that is the idea that Americans very much want to be asked to help, they want to be asked to volunteer, they want to be asked to serve. Despite the conventional wisdom about growing apathy in the country, studies have actually shown that almost 30 percent did volunteer work in 2006, up dramatically since 1989, the last time the survey was asked.

We found when asked is government, is Washington, is our country asking enough of us, overwhelmingly Americans say no, we are not being asked to do enough. Unlike the period after Pearl Harbor when FDR famously called us all to this national sense of calling, we failed to do it. The bill that we have today hopefully will reverse that to some degree and get more people involved doing more things.

One of the things the bill does that is most laudable is expands outreach to let cities, localities, and organizations know the program has grown much more flexible over the course of years. I believe that cities should be thinking about their own version of kind of a city version of AmeriCorps, addressing specific problems, maybe not as general as the AmeriCorps program is, where we have many people going, doing discrete individual things, but create programs that cities say let's try to tackle the problem of child hunger, let's try to tackle the problem of affordability. This type of a program would allow cities to take more control, something that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle support.

Not that long ago, I gave a speech in May, where I laid out a proposal in something I called AppleCorps, that New York City would come up with their program to take advantage. The idea would be if you get cities involved, maybe we can get them to put money in on top of what we in the Federal Government are offering to tackle those challenges that they face.

One thing is very clear, that when Roosevelt once famously asked, ``Now that we are in this war, we are all in it, all the way. Every single, man, woman, and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history. We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories.'' This bill seeks to do that.

Thank you very much for the time.

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank a committed staffer of mine, Michael Marcy.

Michael has been with my office for 4 years now. These past years he administered my office and maintained my hyperactive schedule with a clear and precise head and a generous sense of humor. Michael's life- long commitment to public service started with a term in the Clinton White House and continued into Senator Charles Schumer's office. From there he moved into my office--a clear step up from his previous two positions.

Michael is returning to his home city of Buffalo, New York with his wife, Jenn, and his son, Sean. My office will not be the same without him--I thank him for his dedication and he will be missed.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor Tom Terrell, a versatile music journalist, promoter and DJ, who was among the first industry insiders to focus attention on reggae and world music. Tom was a cornerstone of the New York music community for 16 years before returning to his native Washington, DC, where he passed away on November 29, 2007, after a brave battle with prostate cancer. He was 57 years old.

Mr. Terrell, who was ubiquitous in Washington music circles in the 1970s and 1980s, seemed to know everyone and to be ahead of every trend. After beginning his journalistic career at Howard University, he worked as a disc jockey at local stations and wrote about music for the Unicorn Times, the Washington City Paper, and other publications. As the house DJ at d.c. space and the 9:30 Club, he introduced audiences to an eclectic selection of records reflecting his interest in soul, jazz, New Wave, reggae, and African music.

Mr. Terrell's unique, humorous, insightful, and always honest voice was ubiquitious in places such as Vibe, Essence, JazzTimes, the Village Voice and National Public Radio. Mr. Terrell's journalism was often a spirited blend of autobiography and musicology, leavened with slang, profanity, and the knowledge of every trend in popular music for the past half-century. He wrote about virtually every form of music from Africa and the Americas.

Between his DJ work and writing, he promoted concerts for artists as diverse as Cab Calloway, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Mali's Salif Keita. After moving to New York in 1990, he worked in marketing for Island Records, Gee Street Records, and Verve, wrote for magazines and served as the DJ for jazz giant Ornette Coleman's 70th birthday party. Mr. Terrell was also an accomplished photographer who photographed hundreds of musicians in performance.

Back in Washington, one of his final projects was to write liner notes and record video interviews for a six-CD box set of Miles Davis's ``On the Corner'' recordings of the early 1970s.

Mr. Terrell was much more than a talented writer and musicologist with a gift for discovering artists and musical developments. He was a radiant, joyful presence, whose enthusiasm and appreciation for life, music, and a good joke will continue to inspire those who were fortunate enough to know him. Above all, his life represented the ideal that music could be a beneficial force in the world, uniting people across racial, social and geographical boundaries. This was his magic.

As his sister Bevadine Z. Terrell says, ``He loved bringing new music to people. He loved bringing people together, not just African Americans, but white people, Asian people, African people.''

Mr. Terrell set a great example of community for artists to follow. ``How can I help you?'' was a question Tom was always asking. May his memory serve as a reminder to all of us to keep asking that question.

Madam Speaker, I wish to recognize the incredible work of Debra Brown Steinberg.

Ms. Steinberg has been an uncompromising advocate for the families of the victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. She was quick to action taking an integral role in creating the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest 9/11 Project in early October 2001. She also drafted the New York City Bar Association's comments for the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund which was vital in creating the fund. This fund delivered a total of $7 billion to family members of the victims of the 9/11 attacks.

But her work did not end there. For the last 6 years she has continued to care for the families of those who were lost. She has worked tirelessly for the family members of the victims who could not mourn freely--the widows and orphans of the victims who were immigrants on 9/11. Today in New York City there are 9/11 widows and orphans who fear going to the World Trade Center site because they may be identified for deportation.

Ms. Steinberg speaks often with these families offering them her legal expertise. She used this expertise to help draft the September 11 Family Humanitarian Relief and Patriotism Act, H.R. 1071. This bill gives Congress the tools to provide legal immigration status to the 9/ 11 victim's family members. It grants permanent resident status to the spouses and children of undocumented immigrants who died on 9/11. To qualify these families must have been beneficiaries of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. Ms. Steinberg continues to push for its passage by consistently offering her talent and passion to our offices.

Her selfless and persistent efforts have given these families, victims of 9/11, comfort and hope that they will be able to soon grieve and live without fear. As I recognize her work today I hope we can honor it by passing the September 11 Family Humanitarian Relief and Patriotism Act.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, I am waiting for some conservatives to come to the floor, I am waiting for some true intellectually consistent conservative Members of the other party who understand that in their mantra of government staying out of people's private lives, in their mantra of allowing the marketplace to work, allowing people to be judged by their hard work, by their tenacity, by their skill, I am waiting for those people to come to the floor and say that we believe in ENDA. We believe in the idea of not government selecting who's going to win but letting the marketplace do it.

We believe in our friends in the private sector, 350 or so Fortune 500 companies that already practice ENDA that we are going to be voting on today. Where are they? Where are those Members of my colleague's party that are shamed by their record on civil rights throughout the years and want to make it right now? Where are the Members of that party who are going to come forward and say, I don't want to explain to my grandkids why I was on the wrong side of another civil rights movement? Where are those Members of that party who claim to be conservative? Speak up now. This is your moment.

Look, I rise without any compunction to offer some level of congratulations to the Red Sox. As the Speaker knows, and you know I'm a Mets fan, so when we played you in 1986, it wasn't that big of a problem. And as bad as our collapse was this year, we have a great deal of empathy for the fans of the Boston Red Sox.

And I must admit there are some genuinely likable players on the Red Sox. This guy, Kevin Youkilis, whom you know, Mr. Lynch, his great grandfather was named Weiner. So perhaps way back when, there was some baseball talent in the Weiner family, although none has been displayed recently in the congressional baseball game.

And it's no doubt about it that Manny Ramirez from Washington Heights, the New York connection, and Mike Lowell, the MVP, it's hard not to root for that guy.

But I have to say I'm a little surprised there isn't language in this resolution in reference to the MVT, the most valuable traitor. I seem to recall reading that Rudolph Giuliani, that vaunted Yankee fan, who for years and years would put the Yankee pin stripes on, and even has World Series rings, I understand, in his collection, stood up and said that he too was pulling for the Boston Red Sox.

Now, I think there should be some kind of a----