The Congress-And-The-Jewish-Problem Award

Mother Jones Magazine presents this year’s Diddly Awards, celebrating the achievements of the 108th US Congress. Highlights include:

• Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) procuring a subsidy to help build a Hooters restaurant.
• Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) stonewalling a measure to give families making less than $26,625 a $400 tax cut while giving a $93,500 tax cut to those making $1 million.
• Reps. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) successfully changing “french fries” on menus in the House’s restaurants to “freedom fries.”

Mother Jone’s also awarded The Congress-And-The-Jewish-Problem Award. The nominees were ….

••• Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) was happily a member of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews until he saw footage of himself and fellow IFCJ-ers Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in an infomercial asking Christians to “rescue a Jew” by paying travel costs from Russia to Israel. A humanitarian effort, it would seem, until later in the pitch it’s revealed that IFCJ wants to get all the Jews into Israel in order to fulfill “biblical prophecy” and bring on Armageddon—at which time all the Jews who haven’t accepted Christ, such as Joe Lieberman, will burn in hell for eternity.

••• Rep. James Moran (D-Va.) opined, “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.” He added, “The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should.”

••• Rep. Max Burns (R-Ga.) stood quietly at a fundraiser in Georgia while a supporter, businessman Jackie Sommers, described Burns’ opponent as “that Jewboy down in Savannah.”

And the winner is…

James Moran, who has taken (and, under pressure, returned) money from a source sympathetic to Hamas and said that he can’t be an anti-Semite because his daughter Mary Elise is engaged to a Jewish guy—all before hosting a conference that included lessons in “The Art of Public Speaking.”