Ever wonder if the politicians you elect are batting for you, or are they just interested in keeping their party in power?

Well here is proof that you need, in an article that was written about some of the things siad by Rush and Hannity,

” “I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach,” Gingrey said. “I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party.

As you can read here, it is protect your people and your party at all costs.

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Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison’s groundbreaking pilgrimage to Mecca last month was paid for by an American Muslim organization that has ties to Islamic radicals and is “the Muslim equivalent of the neo-Nazi party,” his critics say.

Ellison, a Democrat, became the first U.S. congressman ever to make the hajj pilgrimage when he visited Islam’s holy city in December. The trip was funded by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, a non-profit interfaith group that is one of 55 branches of the MAS nationwide. The pilgrimage was hailed by Muslim activists in the U.S.

“A U.S. congressman going on hajj sends a very positive message to the Muslim world about America and the religious diversity in America,” said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group.

But Ellison, the only Muslim in Congress, is coming under fire for his ties to MAS, which one terrorism expert called “the Muslim equivalent of the neo-Nazi party.”

It is the de facto arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S.,” said Steven Emerson, director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. “The agenda of the MAS is to … impose Islamic law in the U.S., to undermine U.S. counterterrorism policy.”

The MAS was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Islamist movement created in Egypt in 1928. Radical members of the Brotherhood founded the terror group Hamas and were among the first members of Al Qaeda.

The Muslim American Society’s former secretary general has acknowledged that the group was founded by the Brotherhood, and in 2004 he estimated that about half of MAS members were in the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Ikhwan [Brotherhood] members founded MAS, but MAS went way beyond that point of conception,” Shaker Elsayed told the Chicago Tribune, explaining that the group had expanded to include a wider viewpoint.

The Department of Justice has never taken action against MAS and declined to comment on whether it was investigating the group’s ties.

“As a general rule, the Justice Department does not comment on whether or not a particular group or individual is under investigation or has been under investigation,” said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for DOJ.

Ellison gave the keynote address at MAS-Minnesota’s conventions in 2007 and 2008, and one of the organization’s directors took time off his job to campaign for Ellison during his run for the House in 2006. Ellison was also the first guest on an MAS radio show launched last month.

Representatives for MAS-Minnesota did not return calls or e-mails requesting comment. But Mahdi Bray, the national director who campaigned for Ellison, denied his group had funded the congressman’s pilgrimage, calling the story a “myth” and “urban legend” that needed to be laid to rest.

“Keith Ellison is a member of Congress who knows that congressmen don’t take trips sponsored by nonprofits. That would be a breach of congressional ethics,” said Bray, executive director of the MAS Freedom Foundation.

But Ellison’s office told FOXNews.com that MAS had indeed paid for the congressman’s hajj.

“The trip, funded by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, was fully reviewed and approved in advance by the House Ethics Committee,” Ellison’s office said in a statement to FOXNews.com.

The office, which did not say how much Ellison’s trip cost, defended MAS as a highly regarded interfaith organization with many ties in Minnesota.

“The Muslim American Society of Minnesota is a widely respected 501c3 organization incorporated in Minnesota, whose mission is to promote interfaith understanding,” Ellison’s office said in a statement to FOXNews.com. “The Muslim American Society of Minnesota (MASMN) has an ongoing interfaith project with the Minnesota Council of Churches, and a community outreach partnership with the St. Paul Police Department.”

Ellison’s office stressed that prominent Minnesota politicians, including former Vice President Walter Mondale, are close to the MAS. It did not address allegations that MAS has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Emerson said Ellison’s embrace of MAS was an attempt to legitimize the group, which he called out of the mainstream. “It’s very troubling that he is trying to project an image of moderation, but he is tied to these radical groups,” Emerson told FOXNews.com.

MAS has stirred up controversy in Minnesota for its activities in the state, including a fatwa, or religious edict, it issued barring Muslim taxi drivers from carrying passengers with alcohol. MAS said in its 2006 decree that Islamic jurisprudence prohibited carrying those passengers “because it involves cooperating in sin according to Islam.”

Click here for more on that story.

The MAS magazine, “The American Muslim,” has printed articles defending “martyrdom operations” to wrest control of Gaza and the West Bank from Israel.

The Minnesota chapter at one time featured writings from Islamic clerics praising Hamas and urging Muslims to “wage Jihad until death.” The postings, which were active as late as June 2007—one month after Ellison first addressed the group’s convention—have since been removed.

Though the MAS Web site has been washed of the religious texts that critics found offensive, Emerson says the group’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood remain intact.

“Their founding ideologues are all members of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Emerson said. “I don’t think you can get more radical in the United States without crossing the line to incitement.”

Those accusations have some Muslim activists fuming.

“If you read the anti-Muslim hate sites on the Internet, every Muslim is the devil incarnate,” said Hooper.

“In general any Muslim who seeks to have positive participation in American society is going to come under attack by those who seek to marginalize and exclude the American Muslim community,” he said.

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PRESIDENT-ELECT Barack Obama was “saddened and sobered” that his old political ally, disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, was arrested yesterday on charges he tried to sell Obama’s old Senate seat to the highest bidder.

Saddened? Sobered? Is he kidding?

This, from the guy who championed himself as the very face of ethical reform in Washington?

This, from the great orator who once opined that the rising seas would recede after his election?

This, from the guy who promises to kick the lobbyists out the door and down the street?

That’s not to say Obama’s hands are dirty here. Clearly, he and Blagojevich appear to be cut from a different cloth.

At the very least, Obama is not a crude dope with a runny mouth who doesn’t shut up even after everyone knows he’s being watched by the feds. And most likely wiretapped.

More importantly, there has never been evidence that Obama is involved in the sale of his own seat or any of the other big-time rancid corruption that dominates his home town of Chicago.

Obama probably should be commended for crawling out of that stinking swamp smelling as rosy as he does.

Still, it’s a little alarming that he stuck with and supported Blagojevich even after many fellow Democrats, including his top aide, David Axelrod, washed their hands of him.

Obama also opens himself up to harsh criticism that maybe he’s not the great reformer he makes himself out to be.

His reaction was “insufficient at best,” Republican National Chairman Mike Duncan said yesterday. “Given the president-elect’s history of supporting and advising Governor Blagojevich, he has a responsibility to speak out and fully address the issue.”

And Obama has about used up his favorite excuse for all his friends in low places – that they were mere acquaintances.

He tried that with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and wore it out with the unrepentant Chicago terrorist Bill Ayers.

The real problem here is that his home state’s government is under siege and the appointment to his old Senate seat is in the hands of a common criminal.

Blagojevich could appoint himself to the Senate tomorrow and start drawing his $170,000 salary from federal taxpayers right away.

And Obama’s standing around all sad and sober? This is no time for sadness or sobriety.

He’s on the verge of becoming the most powerful man in the free world and his political sway today carries the force of lightning.

It’s time for Obama to take charge.

At the very least, Obama should announce right away that he won’t replace federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald until he gets to the very bottom of this crime in Chicago – however long that takes.

churt@nypost.com

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The CDS spreads on British debt jumped even higher on Tuesday, touching 100 at one stage. This is a little frightening.

I suspect it reflects fear that the liabilities of the British-based banks—which include HSBC and Standard Chartered, with all their global exposure, as well as RBS, Barclays, Lloyds TSB, HBOS, and Northern Rock—are disturbingly large for the size of the UK economy.

Britain has no real debt in foreign currencies. Like other AAA states, it borrows in its own currency. This is a lifesaver.

However, and here is the awful catch, some of these private banks have vast dollar positions, so as more of them fall into the hands of the British state (partially or fully) the dollar debt implicitly moves across onto the sovereign balance sheet.

This is not a subject that I have seen discussed anywhere, but it is worth pondering. What killed Iceland was the dollar/euro debts of its three big banks, not its own sovereign debt in Krona. It is the dollar liabilities of Russia’s banks and companies that is now causing a run on the rouble.

Here lies the real danger of taking over all these banks so nonchalantly.

I suspect that some hedge funds have already spotted this Achilles Heel and are now testing the trade.

(Although a US hedge fund told me last weekend he was targeting the default risk in five other countries in Europe—and the EIB — but not British debt because he thought that the UK’s role as a military power and a permanent UN Security Council member provided an extra shield, ie the global order has too much political investment in Britain to let it happen. I have no idea whether this is a good judgement, but I pass it on)

By the way, my colleague Yvette Essen showed me the CDS data on some of the US states. These are quite revealing too.

Michigan 192

California 165

Nevada 164

New Jersey 150

Ohio 104

So, California is now priced as a greater bankruptcy risk than Slovakia 150.

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