Senate Judiciary Committee Soon-to-be Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) also has oversight fever — which means the days of the Justice Department simply ignoring his requests will soon be over. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.
E.J. Dionne on the voting problems in Sarasota:
Imagine if 18,000 votes had just disappeared in either of the key Senate races. Or imagine a presidential election in which the electoral votes of Florida were decisive and the state was hanging in the balance by — to pick a number that comes to mind — 537 votes. And, by the way, in 2000 we could at least see those hanging and dimpled chads. In this case the votes have — poof! — simply disappeared.
. . .
But there is good news here: This is a problem in just one congressional district. Control of the House does not depend on how this race turns out. It is therefore in the interest of both parties, not to mention the country, to be simultaneously aggressive and judicious in figuring out what went wrong in Sarasota and to use that knowledge to fix the nation’s voting system before a major disaster strikes. Sarasota is the canary in the electronic coal mine.
Perhaps even more alarming than the car bombings that killed more than 200 people yesterday in Baghdad was an attack earlier in the day on the Health Ministry building:
The attack on the ministry headquarters began around midday when three mortar shells hit the main building, Lt. Ali Muhsin of the Iraqi Police told The Associated Press. Gunmen positioned on the upper floors of surrounding buildings then opened fire on the main building, pinning down hundreds of workers inside, ministry officials said. Ministry security guards with assault rifles fired back and managed to keep the insurgents at bay until Iraqi and American troops responded two hours later, the officials said.
Think about that for a minute. It took two hours for American and Iraqi troops just to respond to the siege of a major governmental building in the capital.
What I can’t understand is why Nancy Pelosi is waiting so long before signaling her choice for chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
Here’s what her drag-it-out approach has accomplished:
(1) It has generated numerous news reports (and blog posts) that Pelosi is considering selecting an impeached federal judge to head up such a sensitive committee. Even if she goes with someone other than Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), she will have absorbed the punishment for simply considering the move.
(2) It has unnecessarily ginned up a hot competition among important caucuses on the Democratic side of the House. The Blue Dog Democrats, the Congressional Black Caucus, and to a lesser degree the Hispanic caucus have all seized on the lack of direction from the Speaker-elect to tout their own preferred candidates. The longer the competing parties vie for the chairmanship, the more likely that the losers emerge disgruntled.
(3) By letting this play out in a public and contentious way, Pelosi will look beholden to one interest group or another regardless of whom she picks–unless she goes with a dark horse candidate like Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ). (David Corn and Joe Conason have touted Holt in recent days.) Even then, Pelosi will have antagonized not just one key bloc within the Democratic caucus, but several of them.
The only strategy I could imagine Pelosi may be using here is to let the political tempest itself eliminate the competing candidates rather than doing so herself. But I don’t really have the sense that this is being managed so shrewdly. Rather, it feels like things are drifting without strong guidance from the top.
TPM Reader RY on the delay at House intel …
Intelligence Committeee is Pelosi’s mini-Iraq: She doesn’t know what to do, thus the delay
Don’t assume that there’s a strategic logic, however inept, behind the delay in the selection of the Committee Chair. If she knew what to do, she would do it. The problem is: a) She hates Harman; 2)Hastings is blatantly inappropriate (and thus will not be selected, no matter how much the CBC squawks); 3) alternative selections to Harman seem strained.
Therefore, she will likely select Harman anyway–appeasing at least two factions, the Blue Dogs, and the MSM, who will praise her for being centrist and pragmatic, rather than vindictive and “ideological.” But she just can’t stand the thought of it–thus the delay.
Btw, if Pelosi does decide to screw Harman, Holt would be a smart political choice, too, not just on the merits, because this high profile position sets him up nicely to replace octengenarian Frank Lautenberg for the Party’s Senate nomination in 2008 (many New Jersey politicos think that Corzine should have picked Holt this time around, rather than the scandal tainted Menendez).
TPM Reader CS on Mullah Dobson and his gospel of conversion from homosexuality …
RE Dobson’s decision not to help the Rev. Ted Haggard convert to heterosexuality.
Okay, so here’s Dobson, the leader of America’s anti-gay lobby, telling us he’s not going to bother working on curing Haggard cuz it’ll take too long. This from the “movement” whose only rational argument for discrimination rests entirely on the (wrong) assumption that homosexuality is a behavior of choice — and demonstrably curable.
You’d think Dobson et al would embrace the opportunity to deploy the latest in Exodus-style conversion therapy, especially on Haggard, one of their own most glaring and needy cases. Imagine the PR value! If the almighty priests of family values can “restore” Haggard, they can restore anyone, guaranteed!
But I guess it’s not that important, or maybe it’s a game Focus on the Family knows it can’t win.
Saudi and Israeli sources are sounding the alarm on stepped-up Iranian activity in Lebanon, according to Time:
Iran is smuggling weapons through Syria to re-arm Lebanese allies Hizballah, despite renewed efforts by United Nations peacekeepers and the Lebanese army to seal off the mountain borders with Syria in the wake of last summer’s war between the Shi’ite militia and Israel, according to reports by Saudi and Israeli intelligence sources that have been confirmed by western diplomats in Beirut.
Israeli military officials in Tel Aviv say that Hizballah replenished nearly half of its pre-war stockpiles of short-range missiles and small arms. But western diplomats in Beirut say these calculations under-estimate the weapons flow and that Hizballah has now filled its war chest with over 20,000 short-range missiles — a similar amount fo what they had at the start of the conflict, during which the group is believed to have fired over 3,000 rockets at Israel.
Warrantless wire-tapping, one year later:
For all the sound and fury in the last year, the National Security Agencyâs wiretapping program continues uninterrupted, with no definitive action by either Congress or the courts on what, if anything, to do about it, and little chance of a breakthrough in the lame-duck Congress.
While the Democrats have vowed to press for more facts about the operation, they are of mixed minds about additional steps.
Some favor an aggressive strategy that would brand the program illegal and move to ban it even as the courts consider its legality. Others are more cautious, emphasizing the rule of law but not giving Republicans the chance to accuse them of depriving the government of important anti-terrorism tools.