Posted on 11/12/2006 9:31:47 AM PST by grayhog
It would be a mistake for incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi to set aside fellow Californian Jane Harmon and give the House Intelligence Committee chairmanship to Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings.
Harmon has been the ranking Democrat on the committee and an effective spokeswoman for her party's interests. But Pelosi believes she has been insufficiently partisan and has made it clear Harmon won't be chairman.
Instead, Pelosi is considering appointing Hastings, who as a federal judge in 1989 was impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate after Congress concluded he conspired to solicit a $150,000 bribe, lied under oath and manufactured evidence during a criminal trial. To give him the chairman's gavel would be untenable
It's true that Hastings was acquitted by a jury, but that doesn't mean he was innocent of the crime. Indeed, members of Congress thought otherwise.
Unfortunately, Hastings has the support of the Congressional Black Caucus, which is pressuring Pelosi to elevate him to the chairmanship.
Pelosi has promised under her leadership the most ethical, honest Congress ever. She would send a signal she means it by appointing Harmon and forgetting Hastings.
One of her staffers had his clearance pulled over the leaked excerpts of the Iraq Intel Assessment. Nothing conclusive, yet.
Who cares who she appoints? All of them will leak anything they're told to the press and commit treason, so why pick on him? Democrats have a very long record of doing this.
See, but that's just more of the us-against-them philosophy. Try saying this for a change:
"We Americans ______" (fill in the blank)
It's getting to be a pretty damned dangerous world out there. Freakin Islam doesn't have to defeat us, we're in the process of defeating ourselves.
What a ridiculous question. It's not an issue of "party." It's an issue of long-term viability of the country.
If conservatives are going to retake the House, Senate and WH, in '08, it's going to take a combination of factors to defeat incumbency.
1. The GOP is going to have to nominate conservatives, not moderates or RINOs.
2. They're going to have to get the message out that the candidates are true conservatives, not moderates or RINOs, interested in reducing the size and scope of the federal government and fighting a proactive War on Terror.
3. They're going to have to have a platform, to include a true agenda of tax reform (not just cuts) and reduction in the size and scope of the federal government, that the candidates are willing to support and then enact.
4. The incumbent Dems are going to have to spend the next two years promoting their causes of liberalism.
I believe the long-term viability of the country depends on a conservative government. A vital component of achieving that in two years is for the Dems to go hog wild. If they are on their best behavior for the next two years, the moderates in the country will vote for the incumbent and Nov. 5, 2008 will feel like Nov. 8, 2006. Then we'll be dealing with multiple-term incumbents who will be harder to beat; the Dems will be better positioned if they grow their majorities and take the WH to increase social spending, make cuts to the military, grow the power of government, increase the tax burden, etc. etc. etc.
What middle ground are you going to find with Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel and Hillary Clinton? There is no middle ground with them, as we should have learned over the last six years.
It's finding middle ground with the Dems that has led us to the current level of social spending we have. If this country is going to continue to be a place of hope and freedom, we've got to shrink government, not continue to grow it by finding middle ground with the Dems.
Here's hoping...
Dan Boren would be a much better Speaker than Pelosi... member of Blue Dog Democrats and an ACU score of 64.
http://www.acuratings.org/2005all.htm#OK
The long-term viability of the country depends on a conservative people. The government will follow.
I heard multiple exit polls asking those who had voted democrat. Most actually said they felt the dems would be more fiscally responsible than the pubbies. Most actually said they felt the dems would do a better job on controlling immigration.
The dems didn't win the election. The pubbies gave it to them. In truth, the average American, away from the major urban areas is fairly conservative.
But if the republican party wants to make promises of conservatism and not deliver, don't blame the dems.
Agreed.
The Rats just need to be themselves for a while.
They are our best PAC.
Do you think this is true?
In '94, the national debt was a tad more than 4 trillion. It's almost 9T now, and it has skyrocketed almost 3T in the last 3 years.
Who controlled Congress for the last 12 years and made the spending choices?
Do I think it is true that the exit polls were conducted and people said that?
In fact I do. I have a sense that alot of people felt that government was way, way too damn more worried about the rest of the world than they were about what was going on at home.
LOL ... I'm not arguing whether or not the Republicans deserved to lose.
But do you honestly believe that the Democrats are going to be more fiscally responsible and come up with an immigration policy to stop the flood of illegals coming into the country?
You're claiming to be able to find middle ground with the Dems. I'm arguing that's not going to happen.
What's the Tampa Tribune Editorial Board got against democrat crooks? So he takes a bribe here and there - tinks with the evidence - acts like a scumbag... He's a dem! I thought all dems got passes -- right?
No, I don't agree with those polls.
But maybe we can win the lottery and the dems will do it.
The pubbies already PROVED they won't.
:-(
My hope is that after Tuesday, the Republicans will adopt a platform of conservative issues and follow through with it. I made that clear. If they don't, then it doesn't really matter what the Dems do or don't do, because we've reached a point where the two-party system is unresponsive to the will of the people (which I believe is still conservative), and that's a whole new set of problems.
Harman is my rep and she was a pretty good one until the classified leak came out from her office. Maybe the RATS set her up for a fall by leaking?
Maybe you can refresh my memory, but has there ever been a time when a significant number of Democrats ever bucked their system? Republicans will do that, and have done it often, but Democrats seem to be in lock-step with each other. In addition, I've heard that Pelosi contributed to a number of candidates, thereby pretty much owning them for the next two years.
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