Posted by
Daniel Miller on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 1:06:58 AM
Alcee Ya
Later
John Fund of the Wall Street Journal writes:
Nancy Pelosi faces a new challenge. Fresh from the stinging rebuke that 63% of
her fellow House Democrats handed her last week by voting against John Murtha,
her hand-picked but ethically challenged candidate for Majority Leader, Ms.
Pelosi is in danger of cementing a reputation for being willing to excuse almost
anything in the name of political loyalty.
At issue is whether Ms. Pelosi, who controls committee assignments, will
select Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings to become the new chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, a sensitive body that exercises oversight over all CIA
and National Security Council budgets. The current ranking Democrat is Rep. Jane
Harman of California, a respected moderate who has clashed with Ms. Pelosi in
the past.
Ms. Pelosi is under strong pressure to anoint as the new chairman Mr.
Hastings from the Congressional Black Caucus, which makes up almost one-fifth of
the House Democratic caucus. But there is a real problem of both perception and
policy. In 1988, Ms. Pelosi along with Steny Hoyer, the new House Majority
Leader, and John Conyers, the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee,
voted to impeach Mr. Hastings, then a federal judge in Florida, who had been
accused of conspiring to take a $150,000 bribe from a defendant in a case before
him.
Mr. Conyers is now solidly behind Mr. Hastings, who has served in the House
with him since 1993. He and other members of the Black Caucus point out that
while Mr. Hastings was removed from office by the Senate, a Miami jury actually
acquitted him of the bribery charge. But others say the evidence against Mr.
Hastings was compelling and clear, regardless of what the jury found.
Having campaigned against what she called the GOP's "culture of corruption"
for much of the last year, Ms. Pelosi is in an exquisite bind. She either
alienates one of the most important parts of her political coalition or she
gives the appearance of being indifferent to ethical concerns. My prediction is
that she will choose Plan C, skipping over both Ms. Harman and Mr. Hastings and
instead appointing Texas Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a former Border Patrol official,
as chairman of House Intelligence. Not only does Mr. Reyes have a record of
probity and discretion, but he would become the only Latino to chair a House
committee in the next Congress.
But should Ms. Pelosi fail to take that escape hatch, many moderate Democrats
are openly saying it will be hard evidence that she learned nothing from her
humiliation in the Murtha disaster.
William Jefferson is always another democratic alternative... He and Hastings have much in common. They are both democrats with bribery issues who are friends of the Black Caucus.
Ms Pelosi needs to obey the 1st rule of holes and stop digging....at least until she's sworn in.