I found the following post on The Gates of Vienna, by Dymphna. I have excerpted some of it below to entice you to go read it for yourself.
So what’s the deal, you say? Pelosi pays off a political debt. Pols do it all the time. Right. But do they pay their debts by appointing an impeached judge, a felon, a known criminal with questionable appointments to his own staff? To the chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee??
Hastings was impeached, disbarred, and tarred and feathered by the Congress:Mr. Hastings became only the sixth judge in the history of our Republic (and only the third in the 20th Century) to be removed by Congress. He was, and is, an utter disgrace to the nation and to the legal profession. Among those voting to impeach him were Ms. Pelosi herself, Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip who is likely to become the new House majority leader, and Mr. Hastings’ fellow African-American Congressman, Michigan’s John Conyers, who took pains to deny that race had anything to do with the removal of the bribe-taking jurist.
Believe it or not, even though felons can’t vote, they can run for office. And so he did. And there he sits, a metastasizing cancer — a creep with neither principles nor integrity — now being seriously considered for the chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee in order to pay off a political debt.
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Just to give you a flavor of his “intelligence” votes, here you go:
The disgraced judge-cum-legislator’s record on national security—the most basic criterion for leading the intelligence committee at any time, much less in the midst of a war on terror—has not been reassuring. In the 109th Congress alone, Mr. Hastings voted consistently against key counterterrorism tools, including the Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act, the Intelligence and Law Enforcement Resolution, and the USA PATRIOT and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act. He has been an opponent of the trial by military commissions of unlawful terrorist combatants as well as border control, NSA communications intercepts, and terrorist financing tracking measures.
I think it would have been better for the democratic chances in 2008, had they lost this just past election.
I don't know. The Democrats made pretty clear where they stood on the war and terrorism and what they planned to do, and people voted for them anyway. I don't see how them following through on it will torpedo their chances in '08. But maybe seeing things firsthand will motivate them to reconsider a Democrat-controlled Congress.
ReplyDeleteIf they move to impeach Bush, or follow the lead of the Germans who want to prosecute Rummy for warcrimes, as well as our Attorney General Gonzales, and others...working their way up to Bush 43.
ReplyDeleteI would like to impeach him myself, but just on the Illegal Alien Issue, and the Security and Prosperity Partnership he signed with Mexico and Cananda in March of 2005.
Henry Waxman is chomping at the bit to start the impeachment. So we'll see.