Now it's racist to criticize Congress

By Rick Moran

If things keep going in this direction, pretty soon it will be racist to criticize the Chicago Cubs - calling ballplayers who quit in the middle of the playoffs "losers" is just the same as using the "N" word to describe them.

At least in Barney Frank's universe:

Rep. Barney Frank said Monday that Republican criticism of Democrats over the nation's housing crisis is a veiled attack on the poor that's racially motivated. The Massachusetts Democrat, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the GOP is appealing to its base by blaming the country's mortgage foreclosure problem on efforts to expand affordable housing through the Community Reinvestment Act.

He said that blame is misplaced, because those loans are issued by regulated institutions, while far more foreclosures were triggered by high-cost loans made by unregulated entities.

"They get to take things out on poor people," Frank said at a mortgage foreclosure symposium in Boston. "Let's be honest: The fact that some of the poor people are black doesn't hurt them either, from their standpoint. This is an effort, I believe, to appeal to a kind of anger in people."

Frank is being disingenuous. Republicans are blaming Democrats for using the CRA as a social engineering scheme, not people who got loans through the lax requirements demanded by Frank and the Democrats.

And I hate to disabuse Mr. Franks but most of the sub-prime loans did in fact go through "regulated institutions." They are called "banks" or "savings and loans" and they were granted to people in many respects because if they failed to give the loans, the institutions would open themselves up to charges of "red lining" and hence, lose their FDIC charter.

Could Franks be referring to the secondary mortgage market? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Democrats jawboning for lax standards there also contributed to the crisis we're in.

I wonder if the Democrats will ever tire of playing the race card.