Pelosi's Unintelligent Choice

[davidinalameda]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/31/AR2006103101314.html

If Democrats win control of the House next week, Nancy Pelosi's first test as speaker will arrive long before the 110th Congress convenes. Her choice to head the House intelligence committee -- unlike other House committees, this one is left entirely up to the party leadership -- will speak volumes about whether a Speaker Pelosi will be able to resist a return to paint-by-numbers Democratic Party interest-group politics as usual.

Pelosi is in a box of her own devising. The panel's ranking Democrat is her fellow Californian Jane Harman -- smart and hardworking but also abrasive, ambitious and, in Pelosi's estimation, insufficiently partisan on the committee. So Pelosi, once the intelligence panel's ranking Democrat herself, has made clear that she doesn't intend to name Harman to the chairmanship.

The wrong decision, in my view, but one that's magnified by the unfortunate fact that next in line is Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings. In 1989, after being acquitted in a criminal trial, Hastings was stripped of his position as a federal judge -- impeached by the House in which he now serves and convicted by the Senate -- for conspiring to extort a $150,000 bribe in a case before him, repeatedly lying about it under oath and manufacturing evidence at his trial.

Ordinarily, that might doom Hastings's chances, but the situation is further inflamed by racial politics: Hastings is African American, and the Congressional Black Caucus has made it clear that it will not tolerate his rejection. Another black lawmaker, Georgia's Sanford Bishop, was passed over to accommodate Harman, who reclaimed her seniority when she returned to Congress in 2000 after a gubernatorial run. And the black caucus is still smarting over Pelosi's move to oust Louisiana's William J. Jefferson from the Ways and Means Committee after the FBI found a freezerful of cash in Jefferson's home.

Hastings would be a horrible choice for Intelligence chair; Harman would be 1000% better

[rpannier]

1. I think she should give it to

Bishop or Harman.

Hastings would be a bad choice (IMLHO)

[davidinalameda]

2. I want to see Harman as chair

she's the ranking member and her face and name are out there

[necso]

3. A tad premature, methinks.

Harman, Madam Speaker, it's her due.