And Yet Another Democrat Lie

Steny Hoyer draped himself in the regalia of an anti-pork crusader. But he's slipping millions of dollars worth of earmarks into spending bills, including obvious payoffs to friends.

Even as House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer has joined in steps to clean up pork-barrel spending, the Maryland congressman has tucked $96 million worth of pet projects into next year's federal budget, including $450,000 for a campaign donor's foundation.

Hoyer (D) is one of the top 10 earmarkers in the House for 2008, based on budget requests in bills so far, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, an independent watchdog group.

A crooked politician. Who'da thunk it?

Among the worthy projects Steny Hoyers force fed: InTune. I know what you're thinking, :InTune? What's that?

Consider the $450,000 that Hoyer inserted into a 2008 education spending bill for the California-based InTune Foundation Group, whose Web site describes it as a music-education nonprofit group.

In 2005, InTune got a previous earmark for nearly $500,000 to develop lesson plans on funk music and Nobel Peace laureates. Asked recently how effective that program had been, Education Department officials said they didn't know. InTune hadn't turned in a report on what it did, officials said.

"It is significantly past due," department spokeswoman Rebecca Neale said, noting that the deadline was September 2006. She said that the department had tried to reach InTune but that its old telephone and e-mail were out of service and there was no contact information on its Web site.

$450,000 for a mystery recipient that doesn't even have a known active phone number. We don't even know what these people do with the money, except that they funnel some of it back to Steny Hoyer. Apparently, InTune's only documentable achievement is $31,000 in donations to Steny Hoyer.