Word: pelosi
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Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi, who stumbled badly last week when she publicly backed the failed candidacy of Rep. John Murtha for majority leader, could be headed for another political tumble if she presses ahead with long-standing plans to elevate Rep. Alcee Hastings, a senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, to the panel's chairmanship...
...Democratic aide says Pelosi has not decided whom she will name as chairman of the intelligence panel, but that she was leaning against the current top Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman. Her preferred nominee has long been Hastings, but like Murtha he has his own ethically challenged history. And while the broad outlines of that past are well known, the grimy specifics are only now emerging...
...although that ruling was itself later vitiated by the Supreme Court. Reports on those impeachment proceedings were posted Monday evening on the blog of the left-of-center ethics watchdog, Committee for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, fleshing out the details of an episode that Hastings, and surely Pelosi, would much rather forget...
...important is a case dating back to the 1980s and Hastings' prior, ill-fated career as a judge? Well, at least Hastings seems to realize that it won't be so easily dismissed as ancient history. He recently sent Pelosi a five-page open letter explaining his side of the story - and appended the statements of Senators Specter and Bingaman...
...Pelosi has for quite some time put out signals that she will replace Harman as the top Democrat on the panel in order to maintain a traditional rotation in the spot. But Democratic insiders say her motivation is far more personal - as was Pelosi's support of Murtha against her nemesis of several years, incoming Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Harman defenders say Pelosi's complaints either stem from an unworthy catfight among leading California congresswomen; Harman's close relationship with Hoyer; or Harman's efforts to seem bipartisan on controversial issues such as the Administration's controversial domestic warrantless wiretapping...