The House of Representatives voted yesterday to give themselves a cost-of-living raise. Congratulations, lawmakers! Next year you’ll be making $3,100 more than you did this year.

Unfortunately, Congress doesn’t want to share the wealth. This makes the eighth time Congress has voted to increase its own pay since 1997; they, however, have voted down every attempt to give minimum wage earners a cost of living raise since 1997. Today, the real value of the minimum wage is $3.50 below what it was in 1968. Working full time for minimum wage today will rake in a whopping $10,700 a year, or about $5,000 below the poverty level for a family of three

Hope your conscience doesn’t bother you so much that you can’t enjoy that extra $3,100, Congress.

President Bush invoked 9/11 five times last night. He refereneced Osama bin Laden twice.

It was a desperate attempt to imply a link between the increasingly deadly war in Iraq and the attacks on American soil in 2001. America knows that’s not true. Actually, so does President Bush.

In a press conference on 1/31/03, asked if he believed there was a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, President Bush admitted, “I can’t make that claim.”