Timothy Noah, a liberal Democrat, no less, who writes for Slate is calling on Democrats to dump Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, or at least get ready to:
I'll admit my timing could be better, since the incoming House Democrats, on a unanimous voice vote, just made Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaker of the House. But I think her party should give serious thought to dumping her.
The proximate reason, of course, is that she tried (and, thankfully, failed) to install as House majority leader Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa. It's bad enough that Pelosi promoted Murtha (over the perfectly acceptable Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who won the caucus vote) in spite of Murtha's having once been named an unindicted co-conspirator in Abscam, a 1980 FBI sting operation in which G-men posing as representatives of an Arab sheikh offered $50,000 bribes to members of Congress. Even worse is that Pelosi persisted even after a videotape of Murtha's Abscam performance ("I'm not interested ... at this point") turned up on the Web, and Democrats began fretting that they were about to erase all distinctions between themselves and the Abramoff-tainted Republicans from whom they'd only just wrenched a House majority. Almost before it began, Pelosi's honeymoon is over.
Murtha was the first strike, Alcee Hastings, the impeached corrupt judge who is Pelosi's pick to head the intelligence committee, will be the second. Read the rest of Noah's thoughts on it at the link.
