House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has decided against naming either Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, or Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), the panel's No. 2 Democrat, to chair the pivotal committee next year.
The decisions came despite lobbying by conservative Democrats on Harman's behalf and a full-throttled campaign by Hastings to overcome the stigma of the 1988 impeachment that drove him from his federal judgeship.
Harmon actually wanted the keep Bush's warrantless surveillance program secret after the Times broke the story. I'm glad she's gone.
And the SCLM
's immediate distortion of the story, making into some sort of Harman/Pelosi catfight, is a measure of the importance of Pelosi's choice.
NOTE The "central front" in the war to restore Constitutional government is the criminal Bush regime's use and abuse of the intelligence apparatus. This committee chair is going to handle those matters. And Pelosi was going to give that to either a Bush enabler like Harman or a once-indicted Judge? Let's be serious.
Pragmatically, let's remember that both of the Moderate, Centrist Maine Girls are up to their eyeballs helping Bush out on intelligence matters: Collins on the Homeland Security Committee, and Snowe on the Intelligence Committee. Collins voted for the McCain Pro-Torture and Incumbent Enabling Act (MCA); and Snowe, though absent, said she would have voted for it. Since when was the "sensible center" pro-torture?
UPDATE Glenn Greenwald deconstructs the whole VRWC-driven mini-drama. Glenn also injects some truth into this hitherto extremely truthy episode:
UPDATE: Not that any more are required, but one should add to the pile of myths and falsehoods fueling this story the notion that Pelosi was "denying" Harman her natural and rightful place as Chair, or "demoting" her or pushing her aside. In fact, the House Intelligence Committee -- in addition to having unique non-seniority rules -- also has unique term-limit rules, limiting members to no more than four terms in a six term period.
Harman had met the term limits, and thus, rather than having some entitlement to become Chair, Harman was hoping that Pelosi would, in essence, break or waive the rules in order to appoint her. Pelosi did not go out of her way to "deny" Harman what would have been her rightful place, the central assumption of most of the anti-Pelosi commentary. The opposite is true: Pelosi would have had to invoke unusual steps in order to appoint Harman as Chair.
If Glenn is not God, surely Glenn is Her prophet, assuming that She exists, and is the God of Our Choice?
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