Mood:
d'ohNow Playing: LIBTARD ''CULTURE OF CORRUPTION'' ALERT
Topic: Lib Loser Stories
Senior Democrat Exits House Ethics Panel
WASHINGTON -- The top Democrat on the House ethics committee, Alan Mollohan, will leave the panel - at least temporarily - while he defends his own financial conduct, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday.
Mollohan's decision comes in an election year when his party is accusing majority Republicans of allowing a "culture of corruption" in Congress.
Mollohan, of West Virginia, will be replaced by Rep. Howard Berman of California, a former ranking Democrat on the panel. Mollohan has denied any wrongdoing.
The only evenly divided panel in the House, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct
has been divided along partisan lines for the past 16 months and unable to launch any major new investigations. If Mollohan had stayed while under his own ethics cloud, the chances for the stalemate to end would have been almost impossible.
The Wall Street Journal reported two weeks ago that Mollohan (right) steered millions of dollars to nonprofit groups in his district - with much of the money going to organizations run by people who contribute to the lawmaker's campaigns.
Also, a conservative group filed a complaint with federal prosecutors this year questioning whether Mollohan correctly reported his assets on financial disclosure forms.
While Mollohan's troubles threaten to become a major campaign problem for Democrats, Pelosi, of California, said in a statement that Mollohan decided on his own to step down and that she accepted his decision.
"The allegations against Congressman Mollohan originate from the National Legal and Policy Center, which engages in highly partisan attacks on Democrats," Pelosi said.
"The attacks are an attempt to deflect attention from the long list of Republican criminal investigations, indictments,
plea agreements and resignations which have resulted from the reported long-term and extensive criminal enterprise run out of House Republican leadership offices," she said.
Using a phrase that has become a Democratic refrain, Pelosi said, "The Republican culture of corruption has been ignored by the ethics committee for a year and a half following the decision of the Republican leadership to fire their own chairman and committee members for doing their job."
While Mollohan and committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash., had 16 months of friction, Berman had a good working relationship with former ethics chairman Joel Hefley, R-Colo.
Hefley sought to have his term as chairman extended at the start of but he and two other Republicans were forced off the 10-member committee after having voted to admonish then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.
Since the beginning of last year, the two leaders fought over internal rules and staffing, and in a recent meeting discussed - but were unable to agree - on launching any new investigations.
Breitbart.com ~ Associated Press - Larry Margasak ** Senior Democrat Exits House Ethics Panel
Origional story:Senior Dem on House Ethics committee under investigation--West Virginia Rep. Mollohan
Posted by yaahoo_2006iest
at 12:42 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, 22 April 2006 12:48 AM EDT
silly
Citing the Washington Post story on the then-secret prisons and the New York Times article disclosing terrorist surveillance efforts, both of which won Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, NPR's Nina Totenberg declared on Inside Washington that nefarious Bush administration practices justified the decision to reward the two newspapers: "It's a good thing that they won for those intelligence stories because the Bush administration is investigating now and is threatening to subpoena and conceivably jail those reporters. So I think it's important that those stories be rewarded as something important to have done." (Transcripts follow.)
CBS's story didn't name the CIA staff member and neither did ABC's World News Tonight which held itself to a short item read by the anchor. Friday afternoon on MSNBC, and on the NBC Nightly News, Andrea Mitchell identified the fired CIA employee as Mary McCarthy of the CIA's Inspector General's office. 
Intelligence sources tell NBC News the accused officer, Mary McCarthy, worked in the CIA's inspector general's office and had worked for the National Security Council under the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.
The leak pertained to stories on the CIA's rumored secret prisons in Eastern Europe, sources told NBC. The information was allegedly provided to Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who wrote about CIA prisons in November and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for her reporting.
Sources said the CIA believes McCarthy had more than a dozen unauthorized contacts with Priest. Information about subjects other than the prisons may have been leaked as well....
That Priest story was a 
Schieffer introduced the April 21 CBS Evening News story:
"It is no secret that the current administration does not like its people hanging out with news reporters without permission. But the administration took that concern to a new level today and scored a first -- a dubious first, to be sure -- but a first. Jim Stewart has more on that."
Later, on Inside Washington aired at 8:30pm EDT on Washington, DC's PBS affiliate, WETA-TV channel 26 (and which will re-air at 7pm Saturday on Washington's cable NewsChannel 8 and again at 10am Sunday on Washington's ABC affiliate, WJLA-TV channel 7 where it was taped Friday afternoon), NPR's Nina Totenberg argued:
"It's a lucky thing that the New York Times and the Washington Post -- not a lucky, it's a good thing that they won for those intelligence stories because the Bush administration is investigating now and is threatening to subpoena and conceivably jail those reporters. So I think it's important that those stories be rewarded as something important to have done...."
"One of the things that a civilized and democratic society is supposed to do is have a system of checks and balances. And this administration did not allow that system of checks and balances to exist. Congress didn't know about this stuff by in large, it didn't approve of this stuff by in large. And the administration has not tried to institute any sort of mechanisms, legal, any legal mechanisms to put, have anybody from outside check them."
Fellow panelist Charles Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist, retorted: "In the NSA case, that's simply not so. There were eight top leaders in the Congress who knew about the program. To say that Congress was not informed is simply wrong."
CNN reporter tossed from Hu welcoming ceremony
chatty
Duke Researchers Debunk Apocalyptic Liberalism
They go on to demonstrate here through science and objective thinking why the hysteria of the left regarding the misnomer global warming is, as I have always said, it's political. Scaremongering on the earth's climate is not based on science and the reason that they can get away with it is because science and math, as we all know, is horribly taught in this country. Look at the science and math scores. We know they're horrible. The United States was near the bottom of the heap in industrialized nations when it comes to teaching and learning science and math. The second story was in the 
"Global warming may not be as dramatic as some scientists have predicted. Using temperature readings from the past 100 years, 1,000 computer simulations and the evidence left in ancient tree rings, Duke University scientists announced yesterday that 'the magnitude of future global warming will likely fall well short of current highest predictions.'" They're not predictions; they're wild guesses! "Supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, the Duke researchers noted that some observational studies predicted that the Earth's temperature could rise as much as 16 degrees in this century because of an increase in carbon dioxide or other so-called greenhouse gases. The Duke estimates show the chances that the planet's temperature will rise even by 11 degrees is only 5 percent, which falls in line with previous, less-alarming predictions that meteorologists made almost three decades ago. Marked climate change in other centuries resulted from 'external forcing,' said the Duke findings.
"
At any rate, you do now have some scientific community members from elite leftist institutions now who are worried about their reputations, and I would think a lot of scientists would be. They don't want to get lumped in with this mad dash to insanity that is based purely on politics and money -- and then 
"The study's results refute recent research suggesting that the climate may be susceptible to extreme increases in temperature. But Hegerl cautions that the findings do not diminish the threat of global warming." Oh, of course not, they don't diminish the "threat," no, no, no! The climate may not be as susceptible to it, and it may not be as bad, but, oh, we can't deny there's global warming. Now, you know what's happening. As the leftist environmental wackos hear this and other leftist intellectuals and they find out that all this contrary study and data is coming from Duke within the context of the Duke rape case,
you just know that the left has got somebody out there saying, "I knew there was something wrong at Duke. Everybody thinks it's this rape thing, but it's their science department! I knew there was something wrong at Duke."
Oh, and then there's this from the 
It means the climate isn't killing us, it means we've got the best health care system in the world and all we have is a crisis, panic-oriented community on the left that gins up doom and gloom every day.
We all know the life expectancy is increasing. We all know people are living longer. How does this story even get written as though it's news? The headline here: "
Read the Background Material...
.
Related: 
spacey
Fulbright's Terror Supporter
At-Tajdid's website has a permanent link to the Union of Good, an umbrella organization of Hamas-funding charities. Five of these organizations have been listed by the U.S. Treasury Department as Specially Designated Global Terrorist entities (SDGTs):
♠ The Al-Aqsa Foundation, Belgium and Holland Branches
In addition, two more groups, The World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY), and the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), have been accused in a lawsuit filed by families of the 9/11 victims[1] of being "connected to Osama bin Laden and two of his top operatives."
The Union of Good was established in October 2000 and is presided over by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi and run by Essam Yussuf, a prominent figure in Interpal, a British Hamas front organization. Even the Palestinian Authority considers the Union of Good as a body supporting Hamas.
Clicking on the link to the Union of Good on the At-Tajdid website gives the reader a choice of English or Arabic. The English site takes the reader to the donations page of Interpal, a British-based charity that is designated by the U.S. as an SDGT. According to U.S. law, this is an indication that Khalfi himself should be designated a SGDT. A check of archived At-Tajdid websites shows this link to be a permanent feature since at least February 2003.
In August 2003, when the U.S. Treasury Department designated Interpal and several other Union of Good charities as SDGTs, it determined that "they provide support to Hamas and form part of its funding network in Europe." In other words, Mustapha Khalfi is the editor of a newspaper that knowingly solicited funds for a SDGT.
Executive order 13224 is very clear about the criteria that the Secretary of the Treasury may use to designate an entity as a SDGT. Anyone determined to "act for or on behalf" of a listed entity or to "provide financial...support for, or financial services to or in support of...entities designated in or under the Order" or "[t]o be otherwise associated with certain individuals or entities designated in or under the Order" may be designated a SDGT. In other words, soliciting funds or even being associated with an SDGT is enough to get someone designated an SDGT.
Given the facts, it strains credulity to assert that Khalfi did not knowingly support funding Interpal or that he was not associated with the Union of Good. There is at least a prima facie case to designate Khalfi as a SDGT. The only possible recourse for a defender of Khalfi is try to exonerate him on a technicality. Khalfi certainly violated the spirit of executive order 13224 if not the letter, and the U.S. Treasury department is currently reviewing a dossier of our findings.
Also, At Tajdid is the official paper of an association called Al Islah Wa Attawhid, also known by its French acronym MUR (Mouvement de l'Unicite' et de la Reforme) which is closely linked to the same SDGTs. The MUR is a constituent organization of the Union of Good, which we described above. In addition, Dr. Abd Ziyad Al-Mughrabi al-Idrisi, who sits on the consultative council of the MUR and the secretariat of the PJD (Parti de la Justice et du Developement), the main Moroccan Islamist party, is also a trustee of the Union of Good.
At-Tajdid and the MUR Islamist propaganda
At Tajdid and the "Zionists"
Here is a chosen excerpt:
"Congratulations to the Palestinian resistance for this great victory which announces an even greater victory that of the recovery of Al Quds and all stolen Palestinian territories." In light of this one should not be surprised that At-Tajdid and Khalfi were opposed to any kind of peace process in the between the Israelis and the Palestinians -- and even the normalization of relations between Morocco and Israel. In 1999, during a period of relative quiet between Israelis and Palestinians, the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram ran an article quoting Khalfi: "Mustafa Khalfi, a writer who opposes Arab-Israeli normalization, criticizes this group's (Moroccan Jews) economic power because it "aims to influence decision-making [in Morocco]. As another example, during the recent Danish cartoon controversy, At Tajdid blamed "a Zionist provocation aimed at reviving the conflict between the West and the Muslim nation".
The March 14, 2006 edition reproduces verbatim an entry published on "The Al-Aqsa Organization" website claiming that Israeli President Moshe Katsav declared war against the Al-Aqsa mosque.
At Tajdid and terrorism
At Tajdid and the USA
"Despite the difficulty of identifying those who were behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, reactions have demonstrated that the assassination is part of a project that began with the mapping out of Iraqi election results, with the resumption of normalization with the Zionist Entity, the partial European support for the U.S. position vis-a-vis Iran and the threats of NATO military intervention in the Sudan. The assassination has come amidst mounting international pressure against the Syrian presence in Lebanon, thus tightening the noose of arrogant colonial aims in the Middle East."
And for this and other views, Khalfi gets the ear of a Democratic Congressman and one of America's most prestigious scholarships.
[1] 
Origional story... update below
The CIA officer was not in the public affairs office, nor was he someone authorized to talk to the media. The investigation was launched in January by the CIA's security center. It was directed to look at employees who had been exposed to certain intelligence programs. In the course of the investigation, the fired officer admitted discussing classified information including information about classified operations.
The investigation is ongoing.
A Justice Department spokesman said "no comment" on the firing. The spokesman also would not say whether the agency was looking into any criminal action against the officer.
Officer allegedly failed polygraph, admitted giving reporter information
The Washington Post report caused an international uproar, and government officials have said it did significant damage to relationships between the U.S. and allied intelligence agencies.
CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate in February that leaks to the media had damaged national security. Subsequently, Goss ordered an internal investigation on leaks involving classified security data.
The probe led to the fired CIA officer, sources told NBC.
This leak is not linked to the recent scandal in the CIA involving undercover agent Valerie Plame's identity's being revealed, NBC reported.
Separately, the Justice Department is investigating New York Times stories about the National Security Agency's domestic warrantless eavesdropping. Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won a Pulitzer on Monday for their reporting on the issue.
The NSA and other agencies had requested the probe, sources told NBC.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This is a question that no one seems to be asking. And so I've asked it. And here, in essence, is what I think is the answer. (The answer, of course, applies to Ford and Chrysler, as well as to General Motors. I've singled out General Motors because it's still the largest of the three and its problems are the most pronounced.)
First, the company would be without so-called Monday-morning automobiles. That is, automobiles poorly made for no other reason than because they happened to be made on a day when too few workers showed up, or too few showed up sober, to do the jobs they were paid to do. Without the UAW, General Motors would simply have fired such workers and replaced them with ones who would do the jobs they were paid to do. And so, without the UAW, GM would have produced more reliable, higher quality cars, had a better reputation for quality, and correspondingly greater sales volume to go with it. Why didn't they do this? Because with the UAW, such action by GM would merely have provoked work stoppages and strikes, with no prospect that the UAW would be displaced or that anything would be better after the strikes. Federal Law, specifically, The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, long ago made it illegal for companies simply to get rid of unions.
Second, without the UAW, GM would have been free to produce in the most-efficient, lowest cost way and to introduce improvements in efficiency as rapidly as possible. Sometimes this would have meant simply having one or two workers on the spot do a variety of simple jobs that needed doing, without having to call in half a dozen different workers each belonging to a different union job classification and having to pay that much more to get the job done. At other times, it would have meant just going ahead and introducing an advance, such as the use of robots, without protracted negotiations with the UAW resulting in the need to create phony jobs for workers to do (and to be paid for doing) that were simply not necessary.
(Unbelievably, at its assembly plant in Oklahoma City, GM is actually obliged by its UAW contract to pay 2,300 workers full salary and benefits for doing absolutely nothing. 
Third, without the UAW, GM would have an average unit cost per automobile close to that of non-union Toyota. Toyota makes a profit of about $2,000 per vehicle, while GM suffers a loss of about $1,200 per vehicle, a difference of $3,200 per unit. And the far greater part of that difference is the result of nothing but GM's being forced to deal with the UAW. (Over a year ago, 
Fifth, as a result of UAW coercion and extortion, GM has lost billions upon billions of dollars. For 2005 alone, it reported a loss in excess of $10 billion. Its bonds are now rated as "junk," that is, below, investment grade. Without the UAW, GM would not have lost these billions.
Sixth, without the UAW, GM would not now be in process of attempting to pay a ransom to its UAW workers of up to $140,000 per man, just to get them to quit and take their hands out of its pockets. (It believes that $140,000 is less than what they will steal if they remain.)
Seventh, without the UAW, GM would not now have healthcare obligations that account for more than $1,600 of the cost of every vehicle it produces.
Eighth, without the UAW, GM would not now have pension obligations which, if entered on its balance sheet in accordance with the rule now being proposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, will leave it with a net worth of minus $16 billion.
What the UAW has done, on the foundation of coercive, interventionist labor legislation, is bring a once-great company to its knees. It has done this by a process of forcing one obligation after another upon the company, while at the same time, through its work rules, featherbedding practices, hostility to labor-saving advances, and outlandish pay scales, doing practically everything in its power to make it impossible for the company to meet those obligations.
Ninth, without the UAW tens of thousands of workers - its own members - would not now be faced with the loss of pension and healthcare benefits that it is impossible for GM or any of the other auto companies to provide, and never was possible for them to provide. The UAW, the whole labor-union movement, and the left-"liberal" intellectual establishment, which is their father and mother, are responsible for foisting on the public and on the average working man and woman a fantasy land of imaginary Demons (big business and the rich) and of saintly Good Fairies (politicians, government officials, and union leaders). In this fantasy-land, the Good Fairies supposedly have the power to wring unlimited free benefits from the Demons.
Tenth, Without the UAW and its fantasy-land mentality, autoworkers would have been motivated to save out of wages actually paid to them, and to provide for their future by means of by and large reasonable investments of those savings - investments with some measure of diversification. Instead, like small children, lured by the prospect of free candy from a stranger, they have been led to a very bad end. They thought they would receive endless free golden eggs from a goose they were doing everything possible to maim and finally kill, and now they're about to learn that the eggs just aren't there.
It's very sad to watch an innocent human being suffer. It's dreadful to contemplate anyone's life being ruined. It's dreadful to contemplate even an imbecile's falling off a cliff or down a well. But the union members, their union leaders, the politicians who catered to them, the journalists, the writers, and the professors who provided the intellectual and cultural environment in which this calamity could take place - none of them were imbeciles. They all could have and should have known better.
What is happening is cruel justice, imposed by a reality that willfully ignorant people thought they could choose to ignore as long as it suited them: the reality that prosperity comes from the making of goods, not the making of work; that it comes from the doing of work, not from the shirking of it; that it comes from machines and methods of production that save labor, not the combating of those machines and methods; that it comes from the earning and reinvestment of profits not from seizure of those profits for the benefit of idlers, who do all they can to prevent the profits from being earned in the first place.
In sum, without the UAW, General Motors would not be faced with extinction. Instead, it would almost certainly be a vastly larger, far more prosperous company, producing more and better motor vehicles than ever before, at far lower costs of production and prices than it does today, and providing employment to hundreds of thousands more workers than it does today.
Few things are more obvious than that the role of the UAW in relation to General Motors has been that of a swarm of bloodsucking leeches, a swarm that will not stop until its prey exists no more.
It is difficult to believe that people who have been neither lobotomized nor castrated would not rise up and demand that these leeches finally be pulled off!
Perhaps the American people do not rise up because they have never seen General Motors, or any other major American business, rise up and dare to assert the philosophical principle of private property rights and individual freedom and proceed to pull the leeches off in the name of that principle.
It is easy to say, and also largely true, that General Motors and American business in general have not behaved in this way for several generations because they no longer have any principles. Indeed, they would project contempt at the very thought of acting on any kind of moral or political principle.
Any business firm today that tried to make a principled stand on such a matter as throwing out a legally recognized labor union would have to do so in the knowledge that its action was a futile gesture that would serve only to cost it dearly. And a corporation that did this would undoubtedly also be embroiled in endless lawsuits by many of its stockholders blaming it for the losses the government imposed on it.
But none of this should stop anyone else from speaking up and making known his outrage at what the UAW has done to General Motors.
cheeky
Iraqi Infrastructure Attacks Down 60 Percent in Last Three Months
Decrease due to presence of 250,000 Iraqi security forces, U.S. general says
Washington -- Attacks against Iraq's vital infrastructure have decreased by 60 percent over the past three months, the spokesman for Multi-National Force-Iraq said April 13.
Army Major General Rick Lynch, who briefed reporters at the Pentagon via teleconference from Baghdad, said the decrease is directly due to the presence of 250,000 trained and equipped Iraqi security forces operating all across the country, conducting important missions.
To emphasize the effect of this increased Iraq-wide security presence, Lynch gave examples of recent operations in three different regions.
In the northern city of Tarmia, local officials came to the coalition forces and asked them to get rid of the terrorist insurgents there. On March 25 Iraqi forces, assisted by coalition troops, cordoned off the city, established two checkpoints, and then "worked through the city" to eliminate the terrorists, Lynch said.
On March 27, coalition forces set up a medical clinic, which treated 375 citizens on its first day. City leaders then called for volunteers to join the Iraqi police force to give the city a permanent security presence. Two thousand Iraqis volunteered, Lynch said, and 225 of those were selected to be trained and equipped a police academy in Jordan.
In the west, insurgent attacks in al-Anbar province have decreased from an average of 27 per day in October 2005 to about 18 a day now. The residents continue to volunteer for police and army service, Lynch said. Since October 28, 2005, weapons caches have been found, he added.
In Baghdad, because the enemy considers it to be the most important target, security force patrols have risen from 12,000 in February to 20,000 in March -- a 45 percent increase, Lynch said.
On March 27, a raid near the Abu Ghraib area resulted in the death of a high-ranking al-Qaida leader in Iraq: Abu Omar al-Kurdi. According to Multi-National Force-Iraq officials, his real name was Rafid Ibrahim Fattah, and his ties to al-Qaida dated to 1999, including personal contact with Osama bin Laden. He was called "ambassador" in al-Qaida circles, and he established liaison between terrorist networks, and also became an operations officer in Iraq, Lynch said.
For additional information, see 
Sen. Joe Biden: 'No One Believes the President'
Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., says President Bush has no credibility among leaders of foreign nations when it comes to discussions of foreign policy.
Biden, appearing on MSNBC's "Imus in the Morning" show, said Bush lost credibility when weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq and his reluctance to apologize for "coming clean on Iraq" is hurting the nation's reputation abroad.
"The president has yet to be straight with the American people on what the deal in Iraq is," Biden said. "All the way back since Abu Ghraib, the president has yet to be straight about the mistakes he has made ... He has no credibility. No one believes the president of the United States on matters of foreign policy."
On the recent White House personnel moves, Biden doesn't think the changes will do much to change policy, unless Bush does something "big," like fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"It's about the fact that no one has faith in the United States of America as long as Rumsfeld is running the show," Biden said. "Look where we are now: Nobody in the world is prepared to trust the president of the United States, led by Donald Rumsfeld leading the military to use military force against Iran.
"We can't sustain this lack of credibility for the next 2 1/2 years," Biden said.
Biden said it would be a big mistake for the U.S. to launch a military strike against Iran, especially since he believes Iran is 5-10 years away from being able to launch nuclear missiles of their own.
"There are 70 million people in Iran," Biden said. "These guys are not Iraq. They have ways in which they can make it very painful for the United States."
Census: Americans Are Fleeing Big Cities
WASHINGTON -- Americans are leaving the nation's big cities in search of cheaper homes and open spaces farther out.
Nearly every large metropolitan area had more people move out than move in from 2000 to 2004, with a few exceptions in the South and Southwest, according to a report being released Thursday by the Census Bureau.
Northeasterners are moving South and West. West Coast residents are moving inland. Midwesterners are chasing better job markets. And just about everywhere, people are escaping to the outer suburbs, also known as exurbs.
"It's a case of middle class flight, a flight for housing affordability," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "But it's not just white middle class flight, it's Hispanics and blacks, too."
The Census Bureau measured domestic migration - people moving within the United States - from 1990 to 2000, and from 2000 to 2004. The report provides the number of people moving into and out of each state and the 25 largest metropolitan areas.
The states that attracted the most new residents: Florida, Arizona and Nevada. The states that lost the most: New York, California and Illinois.
Among the 25 largest metropolitan areas, 18 had more people move out than move in from 2000 to 2004. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago - the three biggest metropolitan areas - lost the most residents to domestic moves. The New York metropolitan area had a net loss of more than 210,000 residents a year from 2000 to 2004.
Richard Florida, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, said smaller, wealthier households are replacing larger families in many big metropolitan areas.
That drives up housing prices even as the population shrinks, chasing away even more members of the middle class.
"Because they are bidding up prices, they are forcing some people out to the exurbs and the fringe," Florida said. "Other people are forced to make moves in response to that. I don't have any sense of this abating."
The metropolitan area that attracted the most new residents was Riverside, Calif., which has been siphoning residents from Los Angeles for years. The Riverside area, which includes San Bernardino and Ontario, had a net gain of 81,000 people a year from 2000 to 2004.
Riverside has grown to become the 13th largest metropolitan area in the nation. It's a short drive to several mountain ranges, and it's within driving distance of the beach. Locally, it is known as the Inland Empire.
"When you look at housing prices in Southern California, along the beaches and coastlines, you're able to obtain a very large home for a much lower price" in Riverside, said Cindy Roth, president and CEO of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce.
Homes in Riverside aren't cheap. The median price - the point at which half cost more and half cost less - was $374,200 in 2005. But they are less expensive than Los Angeles, where the median price was $529,000.
Other areas that attracted a lot of new residents also have relatively inexpensive homes, even if they are not the cheapest in the country. Phoenix, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla., Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth round out the top five metropolitan areas.
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