Jefferson’s Indictment Brings Trouble For Pelosi
 ‘Pelosi’s Black Caucus problem’ from Michelle Malkin:
Nancy Pelosi, Ruler of the Clean House, has a bit of a headache on her hands in the wake of the William Jefferson indictment. WaPo reports:
Democratic leaders fear that Rep. William J. Jefferson’s indictment yesterday on racketeering and bribery charges, coming exactly one year after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi engineered his ouster from the powerful Ways and Means Committee, could rekindle a smoldering dispute between the speaker and black lawmakers who were once pillars of her power.For months, the Louisiana Democrat’s mounting legal peril has bedeviled Democrats as they sought first to point to corruption as a tool to oust Republicans from control of Congress, then pressed for ethics and lobbying changes that they said would usher in a new era of clean politics on Capitol Hill. For every thrust Democrats made against the GOP, Republicans parried with Jefferson, saying problems in Congress were bipartisan.
Through it all, much of the Congressional Black Caucus has stood by Jefferson and against the Democratic leadership. And yesterday, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), a veteran caucus member, said it would be “as supportive of our colleague as possible, in terms of saying a person in America is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.”
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Looks like the GOP, seeking a decision on whether Jefferson should be expelled from Pelosi’s mostethicalhouseever, may move as soon as today for an ethics review of the lurid 16-count, 95-page indictment against the Freezer King. Jefferson holds one last committee seat on the Small Business Committee. But probably not for long:
“I can’t imagine that based on what’s happened and what we’ve done [on ethics rules changes and lobbying legislation] that at the very least, he’ll be asked to step down from committee,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), who stressed that he was not speaking for the leadership. “We’ve set down a pretty clear marker about what’s going to be expected.”
That’ll earn Emanuel more scorn from the nutroots and accusations of racial double standards from the Congressional Black Caucus–which, as I noted last June when he was stripped of his Ways and Means seat, gave Jefferson a standing ovation after he accused the Dem leadership of singling him out because he was black.
Live by identity politics, die by identity politics.
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Bigger headaches for the Clean House Club:
The Democrats in Congress have lost much of the leadership edge they carried out of the 2006 midterm election, with the lack of progress in Iraq being the leading cause. Their only solace: President Bush and the Republicans aren’t doing any better.Six weeks ago the Democrats held a 24-point lead over Bush as the stronger leadership force in Washington; today that’s collapsed to a dead heat. The Democrats’ overall job approval rating likewise has dropped, from a 54 percent majority to 44 percent now — with the decline occurring almost exclusively among strong opponents of the Iraq War…
…The shift away from the Democrats in Congress has occurred on two levels. In terms of their overall approval rating, the damage is almost entirely among people who strongly oppose the war in Iraq. In this group 69 percent approved of the Democrats in April, but just 54 percent still approve now — a likely effect of the Democrats’ failure to push a withdrawal timetable through Congress.
Their decline in leadership ratings vs. Bush is more broadly based — that’s occurred among war opponents and supporters alike, apparently reflecting more an assessment of their performance than an expression of support or opposition.
How come AP Did Not Identify Indicted Congressman William Jefferson as a Democrat ?
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June 5, 2007 - 08:36 AM on June 5th, 2007
Oh MY! Emporer Pelosi has no clothes, and GOD is she ugly!
June 5, 2007 - 12:40 PM on June 5th, 2007
Anything is good that reflects badly on Pelosi. Oops, I sound almost like the Democrats whose sole purpose is to make Bush look bad. On the other hand, this isn’t some scheme by Republicans to make Pelosi look bad; the Democrats are doing it all by themselves.
June 5, 2007 - 09:10 PM on June 5th, 2007
It’s funny. Republicans would be calling for Jefferson’s head were he a Republican. Democrats are circling the wagons to defend him. What really sucks is that they had the means to indict him before the November elections but the Republican Speaker of the House caused such a stink over the FBI searching his congressional office that the indictment was delayed until now. Because of that action, the Dems got away with claiming that Republicans were corrupt while they were white as snow when nothing could be further from the truth.
The Republican Minority leader in the House is pushing for a resolution for the Ethics committee to send “Cold Cash” Jefferson packing, but the Dems are whining about how it will leave the poor Katrina victims without adequate representation in Congress. I would say that having an influence peddling criminal isn’t exactly the kind of person anyone should want representing them. I find it interesting that all those towns in Mississippi and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast who were decimated by Katrina are too busy rebuilding to stand around whining, while the welfare parasites from New Orleans are doing nothing but crying and complaining. They’ll complain that there aren’t any jobs, but won’t get off their asses to go to work in construction to actually rebuild what was destroyed.
As for the Black Congressional Caucus, exactly what does it say about their character that they’d demand that a criminal be allowed to retain a high powered seat on the Ways and Means committee just because he was black? Of course we are talking about the party voted for by almost 90% of the blacks despite having blocked blacks from voting for decades, founding the Ku Klux Klan, lynching blacks throughout the south, and letting the murderers of Emmett Till go free.
June 6, 2007 - 08:03 AM on June 6th, 2007
Looks like the demacrats are trembling in their boots:razz: