One of These Names Just Doesn't Belong Here

Here's a little quiz for you. What do the following names have in common?

Christopher Dodd

Tim Johnson

Jack Reed

Charles Schumer

Evan Bayh

Tom Carper

Robert Menendez

Daniel Akaka

Sherrod Brown

Robert Casey

Jon Tester

Barack Obama

Richard Shelby

Robert Bennett

Wayne Allard

Michael Enzi

Charles Hagel

Jim Bunning

Mike Crapo

Elizabeth Dole

Mel Martinez

Bob Corker

If you said they were all United States senators, you are correct. But that's not what we're here for today. They all have something else in common, except one. Do you know what it is?

Twenty-one of the 22 senators named on this list are members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. One is not. Do you know who it is?

Here's a hint. John Hinderaker at Powerline noticed something today. One of the senators on the list made the following statement today:

Now, in terms of knowing my commitments, you don't have to just look at my words, you can look at my deeds. Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon.

Here's a hint. The senator who said that today is the one who is not a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Who is it? It wasn't Crapo, even if the statement was crap. It wasn't Tester testing the bounds of propriety. It wasn't even Chuck Schumer, slayer of IndyMac and the king of self-aggrandizement on Capitol Hill.

Nope, it was Barack Obama.