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A Republican California senator and candidate for state attorney general pressed Democrats Tuesday to advance a bill that would force lawmakers to consider the economic effects of bills.

Harman Stepping Away From Toyota Probe By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS February 23, 2010 WASHINGTON (AP) -- A California congresswoman is stepping aside from a House investigation into Toyota's recall due to financial connections to the troubled automaker. Democratic Rep. Jane Harman's husband founded an audio equipment company, Harman International, that supplies Toyota. In addition, the Harmans have held stock in the Japanese automaker, including at least $115,000 worth in 2008, the year covered by her latest financial disclosure report. Harman's financial ties to Toyota were first reported by The Associated Press. Harman serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee,...

There's been a report that an anti-Israeli lefty translator working for the FBI has pleaded guilty of leaking classified information respecting government wiretaps to a blogger. Checking the record, the most likely leak that fits the bill is this report about Jane Harman and AIPAC, first reported in Jeff Stein's CQ Quarterly:, and carried by the New York Times:

Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman faces prosecution for her involvement in a car smash in which she allegedly used her mobile phone, the Crown Prosecution Service said tonight. A court summons will be served on the MP for Camberwell and Peckham after a police investigation into the crash in Dulwich, south-east London on the afternoon of July 3.

Harriet Harman was yesterday slapped down by national statisticians over her claims that women are paid a fifth less than men. The Women and Equality Minister was told she must no longer use a single figure to describe the complex differences in the earnings of men and women. Instead she will have to give three measures - among them one which shows that far from earning less than men, women in part-time jobs are actually paid more on average than their male counterparts.

The paper, Women in Power: Milestones, listed 28 of the most significant events between 1907 and 2008 involving women on the political stage. The milestones included the election of the first female Head of Government – Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka in 1960 and Britain's first woman councillor Reina Emily Lawrence in 1907. The document, produced by the Equality Office which is run by Miss Harman, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, highlights the role of Nancy Astor who was the first woman to take her seat in parliament in 1919, the election of Dianne Abbott...

What the CIA hid from Congress Were members of congressional intelligence committees told everything about the Bush administration's surveillance programs? Not even close, reveals Jane Harman. By Jane Harman July 25, 2009 As ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee from 2003 to 2006, I was part of the so-called Gang of Eight -- a group made up of the House and Senate leaders plus the chairs and ranking members of the two chambers' intelligence committees that is required by law to be briefed on the CIA's "covert" action programs. Those briefings were conducted roughly quarterly at the White House...

After costing the named defendants their positions, subjecting them and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to unwarranted slander and speculation, and running up the defense legal tab to over four million dollars, the Department of Justice last Friday moved to dismiss the indictment against Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, former officials of AIPAC. The language in the government’s motion to dismiss is dry and somewhat disingenuous (the motion can be found here in PDF). The motion suggests that it wasn’t obvious from the outset that the case would require some disclosure of classified information. It’s hard for me...

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia - Federal prosecutors moved Friday to dismiss espionage-related charges against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of disclosing classified U.S. defense information, ending a tortuous inside-the-Beltway legal battle rife with national security intrigue. Critics of the prosecution of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee accused the federal government of trying to criminalize the sort of back-channel discussions between government officials, lobbyists and reporters that are commonplace in Washington. AIPAC is an influential pro-Israel lobbying group. The indictment had alleged that Rosen and Weissman conspired to obtain and then disclose to journalists and the...

The real scandal in this case starts with the attempted criminalization of policy differences and legitimate lobbying, and ends up in the wiretapping of Congress and the wrecked careers of Messrs. Rosen, Weissman and Franklin. This smacks of abuse of power, and somebody at Justice should be held to account.

"I knew it! The NSA was not the agency tapping Rep. Jane Harman's calls" "The NSA story never made any sense." "The only other agency that has authority to place wiretaps on calls inside the United States is the Justice Department. It requires court approval."

Pelosi Knew About Harman Wiretap By Tory Newmyer Roll Call Staff April 22, 2009, 1:50 p.m. Pelosi Knew About Harman Wiretap Report on Detainees Raises New Questions for Obama Hoyer Voices Concern Over Wiretapping of Members Democratic Senate Women to Headline Event for Gillibrand NAFCU Board Votes to Publicly Oppose Cram-Down The National Security Agency briefed Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “a few years ago” that they had wiretapped Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), Pelosi revealed Wednesday. But Pelosi said she was not told what federal eavesdroppers picked up on the call — and never alerted Harman to it. “It was not...

Major scandal erupts involving Rep. Jane Harman, Alberto Gonzales and AIPAC [updated below - Update II (Interview w/Jeff Stein)] Other obligations prevent me from writing until later today -- and I intend to focus on Rahm Emanuel's war-crimes-protecting proclamation that Obama's desire for immunity extends beyond CIA officers perpetrating torture to the "policy makers" who ordered it (watch today as the hardest-core Obama loyalists start explaining how the UN doesn't matter, international treaties are irrelevant, and war criminals need not be held accountable) -- but, until then, I wanted to highlight this extremely important and well-reported story from CQ's Jeff...

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington. Harman was recorded saying she would "waddle into" the AIPAC case "if you think it'll make a difference," according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript. In exchange for Harman's help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy...

>Harman Vehemently Denies Bribery Allegations Allegedly Caught on NSA Tapes [California Democratic Congresswoman] Jane Harman says she never offered to help a "suspected Israeli agent" in exchange for the agent lobbying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a key chairmanship for Harman. [California Democratic Congresswoman] Jane Harman vehemently denied on Monday allegations published in a congressional magazine that she had offered to help a "suspected Israeli agent" seek reduced charges for two men accused of espionage in exchange for the agent lobbying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a key chairmanship for Harman. ,,, Harman, a California Democrat, was overlooked by Pelosi...

Rep. Jane Harman is denying that she tried to interfere with a Justice Department prosecution of alleged spying for Israel and is questioning whether a federal agency was improperly spying on a member of Congress. Harman (D-Calif.) responded angrily Monday to a story in CQ Politics reporting that the National Security Agency monitored a conversation in which she told a suspected Israeli agent that she would press prosecutors to reduce charges against two former officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. "If there is anything about this story that should arouse concern, it is that the Bush administration may...

Report: Jane Harman recorded vowing take action for AIPAC on wiretap @ 9:33 am by Jeremy P. Jacobs Congresswoman Jane Harman was recorded on a NSA wiretapped conversation agreeing to work to downgrade espionage charges against two officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in return for help securing the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, according to Jeff Stein's anonymously sourced column in Congressional Quarterly. Harman, a California Democrat, was allegedly recorded in a conversation with a suspected Israeli agent. The conversation reportedly took place before the 2006 election, when Democrats seized control of the chamber and, therefore,...

Congressional Quarterly just reported a highly secret National Security Agency wiretap report on Rep. Jane Harman. Wait. Before we get to the content of the wiretap, all you ACLU types should be hitting the ceiling in rage. Because NSA wiretaps are the most carefully protected, super-secret operations carried on by the Federal government. Even during the Bush Administration, when the CIA carried on an unconcealed war on the Bush policy in the War on Terror through selective and politically damaging leaks to the New York Times, no wiretap recordings were released. Wiretaps of Members of Congress are even more sensitive,...

Rep. Jane Harman said Friday that she warned the CIA not to destroy videotapes of its interrogations of terror suspects and defended herself from critics who said she should have done more to prevent their disposal. CIA Director Michael Hayden disclosed Thursday night that congressional leaders, including Harman, had been informed of the agency's plan to destroy those tapes several years ago. Hayden was defending his agency from a New York Times report that the tapes had been destroyed in 2005. In an interview Friday, Harman said that after the briefing in 2003, she sent a letter to the CIA...

The best of our elected officials demonstrate the ability to rise to the occasion, to do the right thing – even at the risk of alienating longstanding political allies and putting their political careers in danger. Unfortunately, there aren't very many of these people around today. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), for example, has demonstrated extraordinary political courage in crossing party lines to support the Iraq war – even when it was not popular in the polls. Lieberman's behavior was very much in the tradition of Winston Churchill during the period shortly before World War II: because he opposed the...