Pelosi Says She Was Briefed on Harman

Why does the press narrative seem to be bent on targeting Democrats no matter what the story is about? Correct me if I'm wrong but this is about a GOP wire tap, and a GOP attorney general possibly thwarting an investigation and what I hear is what didPelosi know and when did she know it? If you're going to have tunnel vision why not lock on the right target?

I don't know what Harman said or didn't say on the wire tap, but I do know when it was just (us) any old joe American citizen that was the subject of these wire taps she did not defend us as hard as she is fighting now that it involves her personally.
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So spare me the "I care about the average American bull crap.

Not bad, but I think you underplayed the best part of the story.
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http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/harman-its-not.html

By the way I listened to that contridictory interview of hers on NPR yesterday on the ride home. Unconvincing is an understatement. First she can't recall the conversation from 4 years ago and then she suddenly knows she was talking to an American citizen.

Well, Dee... it's a question in my mind whether Harman is really a Democrat at all, given her Blue-Dog I.D. and Bush-era boot licking. But I see your point.

Ahoy gunny - I were listenin' t' tha' NPR interview yesterday too, and I were thinkin' it be such a twisted convoluted rats nest knot o' blowhardishess as t' be worthy o' the "best" o' th' Bush crowd. I were cringin' terrible t' hear it! She be soundin' serious less than candid an' truthful, t' be puttin' it kindly, by my lights.
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Tha' bein' said, it were seemin' t' me tha' the reporter were aimin' way more t'wards gettin' 'er t' admit whethe 'r not she were havin' th' conversation tha' were wiretapped, and ignorin' complete th' issue o' illegal wiretappin'. I be expectin' tha' will be th' narrative...tha' she were promisin' influence, an' th' wiretap an' th' anonymous leak be swept o'erboard, so t' speak.

I lost interest at "Pelosi says..." Pffffttt

Madame Speaker, what all did YOU know??? Speak Pelosi, speak!
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Something tells me that Nancy didn't lie, cheat and scratch all the way to the top to be taken down by a memo about torture. Obama is not only delving into un-charted waters by releasing the "torture" memos, he is attacking the very people who will come to his aide when he is eventually impeached for treason.
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Yes let the special prosecutors go on a witch hunt. I am sure there are many more corrupt people in Washington that need to be hunted down. Many who are current allies of our dear Leader.
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I was upset for awhile that this was a witch-hunt on Republicans, but I actually think Obama is going after all of the Washington establishment. Hmmmmm, King Obama. Imagine that.
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Or, is this really Obama aiding his Islamic relatives in the total disruption of our entire Governmental system. Creating total chaos in Washington. We have the economic collaspe in place and he is doing virtually nothing about it. Now a political scandal with the potential to bring down the government itself. The CIA is now totally impotent. He has Janet Napolitano in charge of Homeland Security. She has already proven to be completely ineffective in less than 100 days. Calling out our military as "potential extremists". Holden will keep the FBI in check under his thumbs, everyone knows he is a radical former leftist / socialist in cahoots with the likes of Ayers.
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Yes it is all coming together as we speak. Obama didn't want to be the first Black President. He just wants to go down in history as the LAST President.

Not surprisingly, Glenzilla is having too much fun with the hypocrisy and the irony at work here:

Besides, if Jane Harman didn't do anything wrong -- as she claims -- then what does she have to hide? Only Terrorists and criminals would mind the Government listening in. We all know that government officials have better things to do than worry about what innocent Americans are saying. If she did nothing wrong -- if all she was doing was talking to her nice constituents and AIPAC supporters about how she could be of service -- then Bush officials obviously weren't interested in what she had to say.
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Beyond that, even if there were "illegal" acts committed here, surely we should be rushing to retroactively immunize those responsible, just as Harman eagerly advocated and engineered and then voted for when it came to the telecoms who broke our laws and enabled illegal spying on American citizens. That was when she voted to gut FISA protections and massively expand the Government's power to eavesdrop on Americans with no warrants as part of the Cheney/Rockefeller/Hoyer Surveillance State celebration known as the "FISA Amendments Act of 2008."

If anybody in the criminal Bush administration eventually goes to trial, Pelosi is going to have to search her memory a might bit beyond the Harman/AIPAC incident. She will, as usual, offer nothing. The mark and legacy of her speakership.

If Madame Speaker had done her job when Cheney spit in the face of the House, claimed to be a member of congress, a member of the executive, a member of his own choosing, Obama wouldn't be dealing with the corruption now.

@gysgt213: Thank you. I am so glad that I am not the only one that heard that NPR interview. That was crazy. All I could think while she was awkwardly evading actually answering the interviewer's questions, was "I'm not sure what she did was illegal, but she is guilty as sin for something." I mean, when she said one minute, I can't remember the details of the conversation...if there *was* a conversation...and then a few minutes later declare that she knew she was talking to an American during said conversation, all I could think about was the CQ story that reported that she said: "this conversation never happened." Something stinks to high heaven, and I am itching for someone to get to the bottom of it. Also, all of this "outrage" over being wiretapped (which is ironically the perfect example of karma being a b*!tch), makes me think that she doth protest too much!!!

Zeligreturns at 5:57 PM -Who are the bed-wetters now?? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Zeligreturns at 6:12 PM-Or, is this really Obama aiding his Islamic relatives in the total disruption of our entire Governmental system. Creating total chaos in Washington. We have the economic collaspe in place and he is doing virtually nothing about it. Now a political scandal with the potential to bring down the government itself. The CIA is now totally impotent. He has Janet Napolitano in charge of Homeland Security. She has already proven to be completely ineffective in less than 100 days. Calling out our military as "potential extremists". Holden will keep the FBI in check under his thumbs, everyone knows he is a radical former leftist / socialist in cahoots with the likes of Ayers.
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You couldn't make that up.

I told you all that Rusty needs to get out more.....

P-nnto & PD: The 6:12PM rant sounds more like hulagate or QH than crusty. I think Sybil needs to take inventory...
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Frankly, I think it's a good sign that some Dems are getting swept up in the housecleaning. This will do more good in the long run.
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shepherdwong: Thanks for the GG link...karma, eh?
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Now, waiting for SGWhite or Joe (hopefully) to step in with the AIPAC smackdown in 3...2...1...

I'd really like some one to ask Harman a simple question: You say that if tapes of you exist that they should be released, presumably so that you could hear and rebut them. Reasonable request. So, Representative, do you support that same right for every American? Do we have the right to request, that if our conversations have been taped, that we should be informed?

This is nothing more than a liberal cat fight...

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Totally OT but yall have to see Shepard Smith of FoxNews go off about torture. I guess he just couldn't take that bs they are flinging over there anymore
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Had yall seen this?
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http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/on_day_three_of_the.php
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CQ's Jeff Stein, who broke the original story Monday, now reports that the NSA wiretapped what appears to be a separate, later conversation between Harman and the "suspected Israeli agent." In this second conversation, Harman's interlocutor informed Harman that "Pelosi went ballistic" when a major Democratic fundraiser told Pelosi that unless she made Harman the chair of the Intelligence committee, Pelosi would "get no more contributions from me." (The fundraiser has since been identified as the California businessman Haim Saban.) The conversation was picked up as part of an investigation into the suspected agent.

SG -- Shepard Smith, that's hillarious. So does this mean that he thinks the rest of the torturistas on his network are un-American.

Um, JNS, I think you need to stay away from the fancy words. "Impinge her faith" makes no sense at all. A simple "lessen her faith" would have done the job.
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On the merits of the thing, it does look as if Harman was, shall we say, indiscreet, both in the phone call and in the interview. It seems to be a law of nature that people who rush to deny unfavorable reports wind up, at a minimum, raising new questions about their behavior. With any luck they can hang themselves. Ask Blago.

Only slightly off topic: Yes this story is about Harman and Pelosi, but the MSM have taken the bait. I watched Morning Joe (okay, clearly I've just revealed my masochistic streak) and the story is Democrats knew about this, Obama is falling victim to the leftists and engaging in a political witch hunt. Mark Whitaker says that the president has to decide what's more important political retribution or facing all of our other challenges and calls for South African style truth commission, complete with blanket immunity for everybody.
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Martin Savage says this could look like a new administration comes in with a different political ideology and goes after the previous administration because they didn't like their policies. Hmm -- new administration going after the old one -- could he have been talking about Rove orchestrating a move by the thoroughly politicized DOJ to go after the Democratic governor in Alabama, or could he have meant tasking the US attorney's to go after ACORN and firing them when they refused to participate in the Rove/Delay political witch hunt.
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The media ought to just declare that they are the problem if they allow this story to become about the Obama administration rather than about the perpetrators of these potential war crimes. This story is about Gonzalez, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and their crew. This story is about Bush and his administration. This story is about the fact that while justice is blind, it's not Obama's job nor his legal right to tie its hands.
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Instead of recognizing that Obama's reluctant release of the memos was a response to a FOIA and inevitable, and that Cheney's call for more releases is about his book and personal gain, you set up a false choice of a partisan president trying to appease a liberal base and the noble long-suffering Bushies trying to defend a 9-11 mindset to keep the nation safe.
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The new press narrative is president wants it both ways. Clearly, unlike the Bush administration he prefers to follow the law. He might want to move forward, and I applaud his instinct to protect the folks at the bottom, because in Bushworld the little guys always take it from behind. The bottom line is that a presidential block to any investigation by the DOJ would be breaking the law.
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If Obama wants to protect the previous administration he can give them a pardon but all he can do now is suggest that we don't use this issue to lose control (frenzy prone media that would be you) and get distracted from the challenges at hand.

Dee
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Nobody is "falling" for anything. Scarborough is spinning the story furiously to make it seem as if Pelosi could have revealed top secret information when he knows thats not the case. Chuck Todd just pointed out to him that Pelosi is one of the ones pushing for an investigation and Scarborough still tried to spin it like she really didn't want to. This is nothing more than a coordinated and concerted effort by pro torture Republicans to try to paint Democrats as being complicit in torture because they think that liberals and progressives will back off if we think our leaders were involved. They are projecting the attributes of THEIR base onto us without understanding that we want whomever was involved to get investigated. Hell if Pelosi was in on it get her ass too. I don't care if you have a D or an R in front of your name, if you supported torture you need to go.
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On another note there is an op ed today debunking much of the pro torturist crowds defense about torture working.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23soufan.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

A reminder that Bush's FBI director himself didn't believe that information gleaned from torture broke up any plots.
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http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/probes-of-bush-administration/flashback-bushs-fbi-director-said-torture-didnt-foil-any-terror-plots/#comment-11383

"Nobody is "falling" for anything. Scarborough is spinning the story furiously to make it seem as if Pelosi could have revealed top secret information when he knows thats not the case"
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SG-Scarborough and the like are attempting to influence the media's coverage of the memos. It seems to me that a large majority of our press does fall for these type of tactics because way too many lack the courage and knowledge to report any story from any other angle than how it plays and he said she said type of reporting.