Unity '08 Organizer does Thin Veiled Hatchet Job on Pelosi's "Katrina Problem."

[KoKo]

Some DU'ers have expressed concern about the efforts of "Unity 08." They say they are working for non-partisan elections and some of Jimmy Carter's former Advisors are involved with the group. But, this article would seem to lead to more questions about their purposes. Notice the veiled attacks at Pelosi while appearing to explain why she hasn't put William Jefferson on the Homeland Security Committee.


Nancy Pelosi’s Katrina Problem

By: Steve Kornacki
Date: 4/9/2007


The outcry from Congressional Democrats was justifiably loud when conservative members resorted to procedural chicanery to kill their latest effort to give the District of Columbia a vote in the House of Representatives.

After all, the district’s 580,000 residents are subjected to the same federal income tax that everyone else is: Didn’t we decide a couple of centuries ago that taxation without representation is tyranny?

And yet the moralizing of the majority Democrats doesn’t feel as sincere when you consider Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s seemingly peremptory attitude toward the voters of Louisiana’s Second Congressional District, who—like their counterparts in the nation’s 434 other districts—went to the polls last fall and chose their representative to “the People’s House.”

It has been three months since the 110th Congress was sworn in, but Ms. Pelosi still refuses to keep her word and seat that district’s duly elected representative on the Homeland Security Committee—despite the obvious value of such a committee assignment to the Second District, which was decimated by Hurricane Katrina.

There are reasons for the Speaker’s reluctance—mainly political, but also very personal.

For starters, there’s the identity of the Second District’s Congressman: William Jefferson. All of Washington has been waiting for his indictment since August 2005, when F.B.I. agents raided his home and found $90,000 in cash stuffed in his freezer.

Now, Republicans are drooling over the prospect of Ms. Pelosi taking Mr. Jefferson’s committee nomination to the House floor—the perfect opportunity for the G.O.P.’s most sanctimonious attack dogs to force a fight and remind Americans of the Speaker’s promise to deliver “the most ethical Congress in history.”

There’s also the grudge factor. Long before that infamous cash began to thaw out, Mr. Jefferson had earned a prominent spot on Ms. Pelosi’s enemies list by seeking to undermine her standing among House Democrats after she refused to appoint him to head the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2002. Cross her even once, and Ms. Pelosi will still be twisting her knife in you years later.

-snip-

The current situation is of Ms. Pelosi’s making.

Instead of waiting for the legal process to run its course and produce tangible charges against Mr. Jefferson, Ms. Pelosi jumped the gun last June, pressing her House Democrats into expelling Mr. Jefferson from his seat on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. It was meant as a simple play for the political high ground on ethics issues, a contrast to the G.O.P.’s hesitance to give up Tom DeLay.

Steve Kornacki works as an organizer for Unity08, a group that advocates a bipartisan Presidential ticket in 2008.

http://www.observer.com/printpage.asp?iid=14493&ic=Wiseguys

[Zenlitened]

1. "... a group that advocates a bipartisan Presidential ticket in 2008."

:rofl:

When they were brain-storming names for this spiffy new organization, was "GOP's Last Gasp '08" among the suggested possibilities?

Memo to 'Pukes: You've sunk your own ship. You're sure not coming aboard to co-captain ours!

[NormanYorkstein]

2. perhaps it's Republican/Lieberman 2008?

That's what they mean by "bipartisan" I think.