On Thursday the new House leadership reached its goal of six major bills passed in its first one hundred hours of floor time.

In fact, they completed everything in only 42 hours. Here is a very informative graphic on each of the six proposals: Sept. 11 Commission, Stem Cell Research, Minimum Wage, Prescription Drugs, Student Loans, Energy Policy.

Strangely, notice what the right-wing Family Research Council said about the success of the newly-elected Congress:

"Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and company introduced measures to fund anti-life research, silence voters through lobbying reform, increase taxes, and police thoughts through a new 'hate crimes' law."

"Silence voters through lobbying reform" is an interesting choice of words for what many Congressional ethics watch groups herald as the most significant tightening of ethics rules. But then note who is on the schedule to speak at the Family Research Council's Blog for Life event today.

Yes, former Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) friend of many military contractor lobbyists just like his jailed friend Duke Cunningham.

Here's what his hometown paper, the San Diego Union Tribunehttp://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051208/news_lz1ed08top.html, says about him:

Cunningham and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, worked closely with two local companies – ADCS Inc. of Poway and Audre Inc. of Rancho Bernardo – to make the Pentagon pay for converting printed documents to computer files. They and a few other lawmakers got Congress to allocate $190 million for “automated data conversion” projects from 1993 to 2001.

Did the Pentagon want this “help”? No. As a 1994 General Accounting Office report noted, it already had the tools for such work.

But Cunningham, Hunter and their House allies didn’t care. Audre and ADCS were generous with contributions – and ADCS executive Brent Wilkes allegedly was bribing Cunningham…This led to such absurdities as a $9.7 million contract for ADCS to digitize historical documents from the Panama Canal Zone that the Pentagon considered insignificant. This isn’t governance. This is looting."

But in a press release entitled, "Clock Runs out on the Family," the Family Research Council went on to attack raising the minimum wage, lowering student loan and prescription drug costs as evidence that the new Congress "made no time for families."

Hmm. . .yes, protecting the kinship of corporate lobbyists and lawmakers, fighting a free market for life-saving drugs, and making college harder for families - what family does the FRC actually represent?