Text 25420, 130 rader
Skriven 2006-11-23 05:37:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Nancy
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She isn't even the speaker yet and her own minions ae already 
questioning her decisions.  This will be fun to watch.  Her party will 
regret making her the speaker...  I really hope she picks Hastings...  
Harman is no prize.  Her office is the suspected source of some of the 
classified leaks to the press...

=================================

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1562293,00.html

Pelosi's Next Big Call
The incoming House Speaker already made a questionable move backing the 
losing candidate in the race for Majority Leader. Will she stumble again 
by choosing a member with a checkered past to lead the House 
Intelligence Committee? 

By TIMOTHY J. BURGER/WASHINGTON 
SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHORPolitics: Did Pelosi Get the 
Message? 
Exclusive: Feds Probe Harman's Relationship With AIPAC 

Posted Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2006
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. 

A 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. 

Hastings was elected to Congress in 1992, but his first big moment on 
Capitol Hill came three years before that. Appointed as a federal judge 
in Florida in 1979, Hastings had been acquitted in a 1983 criminal trial 
on charges of soliciting a $150,000 bribe two years earlier in a deal to 
provide favorable treatment for defendants in a racketeering case before 
him. Despite his being legally cleared, Congress determined that the 
evidence against Hastings was still powerful enough to remove him from 
the bench, which the Senate voted to do in 1989 — even though Senators 
Arlen Specter and Jeff Bingaman, the top Republican and Democrat who 
supervised the proceedings, voted against expelling Hastings from 
office. The impeachment proceedings were later invalidated by an appeals 
court judge in 1993, 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. 

How 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. 

At the time of the impeachment proceedings, Rep. John Conyers, on track 
to become the House Judiciary Committee chairman, said that he didn't 
like what that panel's investigation showed about Hastings. "In my mind, 
the facts that we have educed,(sic) the witnesses that we have heard, 
the voluminous records that we have read and re-examined, convince me 
that Judge Hastings has regrettably engaged in conduct constituting high 
crimes and misdemeanors and that therefore we should vote this 
resolution of impeachment," Conyers said in the proceeding almost 20 
years ago. Befitting the political and legal complexities of the case, 
Conyers has since tempered his remarks, thanks in part to a subsequent 
scandal involving the FBI lab which handled some of the Hastings 
evidence. Still, an aide declined to explain to TIME Conyers' current 
position. 

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 — when Pelosi wanted a Democratic pit bull in 
the party's top intelligence post. 

Moreover, as was first reported on TIME.com a month ago, Harman has been 
under investigation by the Justice Department over her links to the 
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and whether they made a deal, 
in part, to have AIPAC supporters lobby Pelosi to keep Harman on as the 
Democrats' top member of the committee. Both Harman and AIPAC have 
vehemently denied they did anything wrong and U.S. officials have said 
they do not necessarily expect that charges will be brought. 

The dusty congressional report on Hastings dates back 18 years and the 
furtive actions outlined in it are some 25 years old. But details of the 
seedy tale, as presented in the report, may capture Washington's 
attention more now than they did the first time around: an intermediary 
seeking an alleged $150,000 payoff for Hastings, a tipoff to Hastings 
that an associate had been arrested, followed by a frantic cab ride from 
Washington to the Baltimore airport — instead of nearby National 
Airport, allegedly to throw off any possible pursuers. 

In the wake of the downfall of intelligence committee Republican Randy 
"Duke" Cunningham — who is in prison after being convicted for his role 
in a very different scandal, involving alleged seven-figure payoffs by 
defense contractors — the way Congress handles the Hastings saga should 
shine still more light on problems with how the two parties appoint and 
reappoint rank-and-file members of such a sensitive committee. If 
Democrats found Hastings fit to serve as a member of the intelligence 
committee at all, many would argue, they should be able to consider him 
for the chairmanship. As a panel member, Hastings has been deeply 
immersed in classified information for years, traveling to dozens of the 
CIA's secret overseas stations and bases, all with no allegation of 
misconduct in that role (though, to be sure, there have occasionally 
been Republican whispers that they didn't fully trust him). 

Pelosi may have few good options in the current dilemma. If she decides 
to replace Harman with someone other than Hastings, she could easily 
offend the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), which has insisted that 
Hastings' seniority entitles him to the position. But some aides have 
also rumored that there might be another solution: installing a former 
panel member, Georgia Rep. Sanford Bishop, who is also African-American, 
in place of either Harman or Hastings. Whatever happens, one thing is 
clear: after her Murtha debacle, Pelosi — and the Democrats, for that 
matter — cannot afford another misstep so early in her tenure.


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