http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Pelosi.htm -- Pelosi aims to block Democratic hawks from key posts http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Pelosi.htm Rep. Nancy Pelosi plans to sideline colleagues who are hawkish on national security in the Democratic leadership in the House. Democratic Party sources said as House Speaker, Ms. Pelosi plans to block moves that would place hawks into important chairmanships. The sources said a key casualty would be Rep. Jane Harman, a six-term member of Congress who has cooperated with Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. "Nancy Pelosi wants total party discipline," a source in the Democratic Party leadership said. "If you played ball with the Republicans during this session, then you're not going to be given an important chair in the next session." As the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Ms. Harman was expected to become chairman of the powerful committee. But Ms. Pelosi is expected to pass over Ms. Harman for either Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida or Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, the second- and third-ranking Democrats on the intelligence panel. The 42-member Congressional Black Caucus has been pushing for Mr. Hastings, an impeached federal judge, to become chairman. Earlier this year, the caucus was upset by Ms. Pelosi's decision to expel Rep. William Jefferson from the committee after he was accused of accepting bribes. "There is no seniority on the Intelligence Committee," Ms. Pelosi said. "The leader or the speaker can appoint a whole new set of people." The sources said the 61-year-old Ms. Harman, regarded as the best informed House Democrat on intelligence and technology issues, angered the liberal Ms. Pelosi by supporting the Bush administration’s policies on defense issues, particularly the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act. They said Ms. Pelosi has rebuffed lobbyists in the pro-Israel community and defense industry that sought a chairmanship for Ms. Harman. "If Nancy Pelosi's apparent determination to deny Jane Harman the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee to appease the Black Caucus is any indication, Democratic control is not going to be good news for those who believe in competent oversight of the national-security apparatus," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute. Ms. Harman, who helped the Democrats draft a national security agenda for the campaign, said she hoped to remain a leading voice on defense issues. She said her California constituents want her to be on the House Intelligence Committee. "House Intelligence Committee activities are directly relevant to the major concerns of my constituents," Ms. Harman said.
Here's basso propagating a witchhunt agaisnt Harman a few weeks ago, as part of his desperate bid to retain control of congress by bringing all available resources of the clutch bbs d&d to bear. Now he is a bona fide Jane Harmaniac. Love is fickle.
More whining. This time from that stellar pub, Insight, the Rosemary's baby of Moonies and wingnuts. I love how the article starts with a plural as if Pelosi is purging great swaths of Dems, but then can only come up with one example. Here's the deal basso... the Dems have a majority of the House without having a majority of southern seats. First time in a long time that has happened. The majority of gains on Tuesday came from a wide corridor starting in the NE and moving across the midwest. The voters that sent Repubs packing and Dems to Washington want change. Harmon, bless her heart, is smart and capable, but is not going to be an advocate for change... and it is Pelosi's call as to who serves on the Intelligence Committee. Finally, where was this outrage over competence and qualifications when the Repubs axed every independent Repub on the Ethics Committee and replaced them with Delay toadies? What, Insight didn't write an article on that? You didn't start a thread on that? I'm shocked.
Here is Sam making things look like this small portal of the internet means much in the great scheme of things in the first place.
I think that's too bad if she is x'ing out people because they were part of bipartisan cooperation. I don't think being vindictive is good leadership.
Just because you make a change doesn't mean you are being vindictive. Being vindictive is what Rove's done over the last 6 years, so you are probably not happy with Bush Inc.'s leadership either.
That's not what the article says - it says Pelosi is removing those who cooperated with the Republicans. I think that's being vindictive. If she is removing (or more correctly not appointing Harman but instead someone else) because they think the other person is more qualified, then no problem. If she is not appointing the ranking Democrat on the Committee to the Chair because Harman didn't follow Pelosi's lead in the past, I think that's a problem. Not too much, no. Of course that begs the question.
sammy, he;re your boys the times, who have finally noticed, two days too late, that corruption cuts both ways: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/o...gin&adxnnlx=1163099434-CPBnoQ1cvHdkofmzQF+lxg [rquoter]A Clean Start Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, spent much of the campaign season vowing that if her party took control in January, the first order of business on day one would be ethics reform. It was a smart selling point to a country sick of Republican abuses. It looks even smarter now that the Democrats have won. Ms. Pelosi and her party will face endless challenges in the new year, notably the need to figure out exactly what they want to pressure the president to do about Iraq. But the absolute top priority has to be coming up with a way to save the party from itself. The House Democrats are perfectly capable of replicating the Republicans’ fall from grace. They need to throw up protections right away, while they are most conscious of the dangers and least prey to temptation. Many of the Republicans who took control in 1994 saw themselves as reformers from the heartland. But their leaders soon convinced themselves that the Democrats were a force so evil that any effort was justified in keeping them at bay. To do that, they made lobbyists a regular part of the government as they traded perpetual access for campaign re-election money. They created an extraordinarily efficient system for running the House, in which even moderate Republicans were iced out of the decision-making process. Enamored with their own sense of virtue, they shut down the ethics process. Ms. Pelosi has an excellent agenda that includes imposing an effective ban on all gifts from lobbyists — including free rides on corporate jets — and publicly disclosing the secret “earmarks” that get inserted into legislation on behalf of special interests before they’re passed into law. Those are both critical ideas that would indeed need to be passed on the first day, while the Democrats are filled with fervor and not totally focused on what they’re giving up. But she also needs enforcement that works. The stunning thing about corruption scandals is the way they happen over and over again, with people who should have long since learned their lesson somehow able to convince themselves that they will never get caught. The House ethics committee is moribund, and even efforts at revival are unlikely to make it capable of frightening the lawmakers into new behavior patterns. The new majority should establish a truly independent office empowered to investigate lawmakers’ ethics lapses. The first time Ms. Pelosi lets it go forward with an embarrassing investigation of one of her own members is the time that Democrats will begin to understand that things are indeed different. Members of Congress tend to live in a bubble that reinforces the feeling that they are special and immune to normal rules. Being forced to fly coach, to pay one’s own tab at the golf course and resort, are useful reminders of their mortality. But the most destructive bubble of all is the one that shields elected officials from opinions other than their own. To really change the House culture, Ms. Pelosi will need to overcome the toxic take-no-prisoners political climate in which any concession to the other side is seen as a sign of weakness. No one expects her to drop the rules that give the majority leadership powerful control over the House agenda. But Republicans have to be given a role in the legislative process, and the Democratic rank and file must be shown that agreeing with the Republicans on particular issues is not a capital sin. She can send a good signal, for instance, by appointing Representative Jane Harman of California as head of the Intelligence Committee. Ms. Harman has been the ranking Democrat, and she has, in general, done her job well. But some of her fellow members regard her as insufficiently aggressive when it comes to criticizing the Bush administration. Ms. Pelosi, who does not get along well with Ms. Harman, is said to be considering Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida, a former federal judge who was impeached on bribery charges and removed from the bench. If she wanted to put her wrong foot forward, that would be a good way to do it.[/rquoter]
Nancy Pelosi better knows what she's doing. She's too liberal and too powerful now for me to feel comfortable.
Just quit with the Hastings stuff. He's not going to be Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Bypassing seniority on committe chairs rigidly enforcing party discipline... hmmm it all sounds so Republican. Remember it was the Senate and house Republicans that started doing this inlcuding in 2004 threatening to deny Arlen Specter the chair of the Judiciary because he wasn't sufficiently pro-life. In fact they made Sen. Specter go through the humiliation of publicly declaring he would give Bush appointees a fair hearing.
the spectre situation was a bit different- bush saved his bacon in the 2004 pa primary, and arlen owed him one.
Bush needed Specter just as much, possibly more, because Specter's primary opponent would've been beaten like a drum and the fear there is that guy was so radical as to put PA into the Kerry column, which happened anyway. Still Specter has a long record of being an eminently even handed chair and ranking member who also carried water for the Republicans several time, such as his defense of Clarence Thomas. To threaten to withhold his chairmanship and make him publicly swear to doing the job was both humiliating and an abuse of party loyalty. But apparently such things are fine when the Republicans do it.
I think that is great she is taking out those who rubber stamped Bush and Rumsfeld on their failed policies. The country needs a fresh start, why keep the old incompetent gang?
