Hillary! today announced a couple of key appointments.

U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Weston, and Alcee Hastings, of Miramar, were appointed national campaign co-chairs on Thursday for U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Democratic presidential effort.

"We need a leader with a clear vision and sound judgment, who can work with a Democratic Congress to renew the promise of America. Hillary is that leader," Wasserman Schultz said in a statement.

Hastings said a second Clinton in the White House would make the country "a much better place for the African-American community, Floridians and all Americans."

Unmentioned in that article was that Alcee Hastings was making a few headlines of his own a few months back, when he was in line to become the head of the House Intelligence committee. That would have been unremarkable except that Hastings had been impeached back in 1988 and the Democrats had just campaigned against a "culture of corruption."

Let me introduce you to Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) Rep. Hastings was once a federal judge who was impeached because of some shady deals involving bribery. Now, it's not too often that a judge appointed for life gets impeached. It's even more rare that he should then get elected to Congress, but hey, he's from Florida. Hastings also owes $10-million in debts for legal fees.

Lastly, he is the frontrunner for the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee.

Speaker-to-be Pelosi has already proven her ineptness in the Murtha/Hoyer affair and now looks to continue that streak and install Hastings in a position that requires high ethics and no baggage.

The bet from here is that Pelosi gives him the position over Jane Harman who is infinitely more qualified.

Nancy Pelosi does not want Jane Harman to chair the House Intelligence committee and instead wants Alcee Hastings. Yet Pelosi, as did all incoming House leadership, voted to impeach Hastings for bribery allegations in 1988:

In fact, just about everybody in the House voted to impeach Judge Hastings: the vote was 413 to 3. (Just for the record, the three who voted against impeachment were Reps. Gus Savage, Mervyn Dymally, and Edward Roybal.)

Others who voted for impeachment were Waxman, Frank, and Rangel as well as Boxer, Schumer and Durbin, who are now Senators.

How will they explain that they voted to impeach a sitting Judge (a rarity) and now support the same man to head up the Intelligence Committee?

Pelosi has been roundly panned by all sides for her handling of the Hoyer/Murtha affair and can't take a chance of this blowing up in her face as well. If she goes with Harman, she shows weakness, if she sticks with Hastings, she'll have explaining to do. Perhaps an unknown compromise candidate will be selected.

This should be fun to watch.

Priceless. Howard Dean is officially telling Florida Democrats that since they defied him, he's going to make sure their primary doesn't count!

Sure, Florida is America's biggest political swing state. But don't expect the national Democratic Party to back off punishing Sunshine State Democrats for scheduling an early presidential primary. "Their primary essentially won't count, " Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said of Florida. "Anybody who campaigns in Florida is ineligible for delegates."

Whoa... Anyone who campaigns in Florida won't get delegates? Exactly how is he going to pull that off? Last I looked, Hillary and Obama both had Florida operations, and Hillary was in Boca Raton for a fundraiser last month. Even her national co-chairs, Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Alcee Hastings, are from Florida! Does that mean that Dean has eliminated any chance of Hillary getting any delegates from Florida - just by his own fiat?

With states front-loading primaries so early in the 2008 election season, the whole traditional primary/convention dynamic is quickly turning into a joke. But this is ridiculous.

Representative Alcee Hastings will not assume the Chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, impeached as a federal judge in 1989 on corruption charges, dropped his bid under pressure on Tuesday to chair a congressional panel designed to help protect America's security, a party aide said.

Of course the fact that they even considered the impeached federal judge for the position shows that the Democrats aren't serious about national security.

Hasting, being an upstanding man decided to take the high road and accept his fate with the dignity that a U.S. Representative should. Just kidding, he took it in the same way we've grown to expect Democrats to take any defeat, with absolutely zero grace:

"I have been informed by the speaker-elect that I will not serve as the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the 110th Congress," he said. "I am obviously disappointed with this decision." Hastings won election to Congress in 1992, after having been impeached and removed from office as a federal judge. He concluded his statement by saying, "Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet."

During disputed elections and lost Chairmanships, the Democrats are always so eloquent.

Hat tip: Hot Air who notes some interesting things about Hastings and Conyers.

This is getting so ridiculous I can't help laughing.

Nancy Pelosi issued a press release yesterday saying that ethics reform will be the "first order of business" for the new Congress, and Sen. Harry Reid echoed that point today.

Now, let's recap exactly what's happened since the Democrats won on November 7th. First, Nancy Pelosi backed ethically challenged Jack Murtha for Majority Leader and then for impeached judge Alcee Hastings for chairman of the Intelligence Committee...which she finally came to her senses about today). Pelosi herself can't claim to hold the high ground on ethics.

And then of course there's Harry Reid, who was implicated by Jack Abramoff, and supported federal funding for a bridge that connects to property that he owns. It was also reported in October that he had made $1 million on a questionable land deal.

Ethics reform from the Democrats? Now's that's a "botched joke."

The New York Times published a scathing editorial this morning on the disaster that Nancy Pelosi barely avoided yesterday by her own caucus voting against her wishes and electing Steny Hoyer Majority Leader in the House.

They also hint at Hoyer having some problems of his own, but certainly not being the ethics disaster that is John Murtha. But the Times does think that Pelosi has already damaged herself significantly with the Murtha debacle and the Hastings-Harman fiasco in the House Intelligence Committee:

Nancy Pelosi has managed to severely scar her leadership even before taking up the gavel as the new speaker of the House. First, she played politics with the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee to settle an old score and a new debt. And then she put herself in a lose-lose position by trying to force a badly tarnished ally, Representative John Murtha, on the incoming Democratic Congress as majority leader. The party caucus put a decisive end to that gambit yesterday, giving the No. 2 job to Steny Hoyer, a longtime Pelosi rival.

Prediction - Steny Hoyer will be Speaker of the House within two years, before Pelosi's term is up.

Rep. John Conyers is the latest to be reprimanded by that august body:

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) has "accepted responsibility" for possibly violating House rules by requiring his official staff to perform campaign-related work, according to a statement quietly released by the House ethics committee late Friday evening.

The top Republican and Democratic members on the ethics panel, Reps. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.), said in a statement that Conyers acknowledged a "lack of clarity" in communicating what was expected of his official staff and that he accepted responsibility for his actions.

"Lack of clarity" is political double-speak for guilty as hell but he's a colleague so we'll let him off. It's clear that Conyers knew exactly what he was doing and didn't care about the consequences because he knew there would be none.

Note that he will hold his position as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Way to start off, Speaker Pelosi.

To hear the Bush administration tell it, we have lured global jihadists to our trap in Iraq, where we will thin their numbers and claim victory in the so-called war on terror. The suggestion that our haste to topple Saddam Hussein, and the resulting quagmire we find ourselves in, might actually be inspiring a new generation of terrorists has always been dismissed by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and John Negroponte, who before congress in 2007 declared,

"I wouldn't say there has been a widespread growth in Islamic extremism beyond Iraq. I really wouldn't."

Perhaps that explains his demotion.

Well, terrorism analyst Peter Bergen has been looking into the matter, and his findings undercut the administration's claims in rather stark terms:

Our study shows that the Iraq War has generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third.

Irony and politics often go hand in hand. Take the recent travails of New Mexico's Republican Senator, Pete Domenici. He's been under fire this week for pressuring a federal prosecutor to speed up possible indictments of Democrats before last November's election. When the prosecutor, David Iglesias, refused to give the cases the fast-track, Domenici hung up on him. Shortly thereafter, the Department of Justice fired Iglesias, along with eight other prosecutors, including Carol Lam. Lam, like Iglesias, had run afoul of the administration for doing her job. After all, she was the government lawyer who took "Duke" Cunningham down for his many transgressions.

So guess who Domenici just hired to legally represent him in this mess. None other than Lee Blalack, who just so happened to represent "Duke" Cunningham. Small world, isn't it?

March 8 Update: Republican Congressman Doc Hastings (ranking member of the House Ethics Committee) is feeling a bit of heat himself. A formal ethics complaint has been filed by CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) pertaining to the Washington Congressman's role in the prosecutor purge.

HT to Volokh, the buzz of the day is that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has run out of luck and time.

The buzz among top Bushies is that beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally plans to depart and will be replaced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Why Chertoff? Officials say he's got fans on Capitol Hill, is untouched by the Justice prosecutor scandal, and has more experience than Gonzales did, having served as a federal judge and assistant attorney general.

Of course there's very little to go on, but this smells very much like a trial balloon, a deliberate leak from the White House, so it may be true. The problem of course is that there is only about a year and a half left for the Bush administration, and a lengthy confirmation battle might chew up a lot of that time. If the administration is serious, they will want someone that can be confirmed post-haste.

Or this could all be a big red herring. So far, President Bush has given absolutely no indication that he was open to replacing his attorney general.

Anyone who's read this blog or others like it know that people are getting their info from alternative news sources. The MSM has taken a beating in revenue (at least on the left-wing media side).

That said, they still feel that they have the power to tilt this election. A cursory look at the front pages of major papers from today shows that they are beating the donk drum hard. Examples:

Washington Post: MD Democrats Say GOP Plans to Block Voters

NYTimes: US Web Archive is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Guide

Philadelphia Inquirer: Distrust of voting machines is running high

And on and on and on... That's just a random sampling of the front page of three major dailies. All dailies that have lost millions in the last year mind you. The MSM smells blood and is pouring on the anti-GOP coverage with a fury unseen.

But wait. The NYTimes, in their haste to post anything bad about the GOP and to get Kerr'y name off the front pages, has a piece on the supposed posting of nuclear secrets on a Web site. They seem to have proven that, in fact, Bush did not lie:

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein's scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

Democratic leadership in both the House and Senate find themselves in a serious bind. With the Petraeus report scheduled to be delivered to Congress on September 11th detailing the effectiveness of the surge, our esteemed elected leaders know full-well that we have made progress and they must stifle it. They find themselves between what's right for the country--a successful outcome in Iraq--and their simmering base who want them to cut and run at the first opportunity this fall. The power of the far-left was on display this summer as every important candidate prostrated themselves at the feet of the new far-left powerbroker, Markos Moulitsas. The far left is really mad and the Dems are stuck in an uncomfortable position--bow to the angry base or lose the Presidential election.

The Petraeus report is their worst nightmare--a detailed document showing success in Anbar Province that was unthinkable a year ago. A strategy set forth in Iraq that dramatically improved the situation for our troops and the residents who live there. In other words, the report will contain good news from Iraq and the Democrats can't have that because popular opinion may well shift towards winning this war and not retreat. Although sectarian violence continues as witnessed by recent horrific bombings, our forces seem confident they can have and can address that issue as well.

How worried are the Dems? So worried that Senator Chucky Schumer demeaned our troops (and was rebuked from Fallujah with great haste), Leader Harry Reid won't even use Petraeus' name when discussing the report and the report has been attacked as fiction before it is even delivered. That sounds to me as though they are very worried.

We are at a crucial point once again in the Iraq war as well as the greater War on Terror, it's time the elected representatives step up, vote for the good of their country and not for the good of their reelection and allow General Petraeus to speak his mind without belittling his report before he even delivers it.

The nonpartisan nonprofit organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has just released its list of the most rotten to the core politicians in congress. Titled, "Beyond Delay: The 22 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (and two to watch)" the list is full of old favorites and a few new surprises.

Members of the Senate:
Pete Domenici (R-NM)
Mitch McConnel (R-KY)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Ted Stevens (R-AK)

Members of the House:
Ken Calvert (R-CA)
John T. Doolittle (R-CA)
Tom Feeney (R-FL)
Doc Hastings (R-WA)
Duncan Hunter (R-CA)
William Jefferson (D-LA)
Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
Gary Miller (R-CA)
Alan Mollohan (D-WV)
Timothy Murphy (R-PA)
John Murtha (D-PA)
Steve Pearce (R-NM)
Rick Renzi (R-AZ)
Harold Rogers (R-KY)
David Scott (D-GA)
Don Young (R-AK)
Jerry Weller (R-IL)
Heather Wilson (R-LA)

Dishonorable Mention:
Larry Craig (R-ID)
David Vitter (R-LA)

If you want to know the ins-and-outs of what makes you eligible for the list, you can have a look-see here.
Pretty much what you'd expect. Graft, graft and more graft.

Nancy Pelosi is pulling a 'Murtha' again. She's long had a feud with fellow California Democratic Representative Jane Harman, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, because she feels that Harman has cooperated too closely with the Republicans on that Committee. Harman is smart, articulate, understands the intelligence community and is a loyal Democrat. But she clashed with Pelosi because she didn't share Pelosi's pathological hatred of the Bush Administration that would color all of her statements and actions. Harmon felt she had a job to do, and did it well. I did notice a marked change in Harman the closer we got to the 2006 elections. But that was after Pelosi had made public her dissatisfaction with Harman, and at that point I feel that Harmon was going along with the flow of the Democrats' campaign strategy.

Normally, Harman would be next in line for the Chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, and would be a fine choice. The Intelligence Committees should be (and always were until the Democrats changed it by their recent tactics and actions to regain power) the most non-partisan committees of all - the stakes are just too high for all of us. But that's not what Pelosi wants.