PELOSI TAKES CHARGE….Now this is more like it:
[Nancy] Pelosi plans to start the 110th Congress with a bang on Jan. 4 ? when the House holds its ceremonial swearing in and elects her as speaker ? by immediately setting off on a sprint of several weeks to enact the Democrats’ ambitious 100-hour agenda.
Lawmakers usually return home between the swearing-in ceremony and the president’s speech, but analysts say the hurried schedule gives Democrats a chance to show instant results. It could also put Bush on the defensive, forcing him to sign or veto a host of popular initiatives.
This is a great idea: not only does it send a message of urgency and seriousness (not to mention hard work, a quality notably missing from Congress in recent years), but it allows Pelosi to seize the legislative initiative instead of just waiting to react to Bush’s State of the Union address a few weeks later. It’s a smart move.
Combine this with her decision to give extra attention to lobbying reform, her slapdown of loose impeachment talk, and her dismissal of Charlie Rangel’s political theater over the draft, and Pelosi seems to have put the Hoyer/Murtha fiasco firmly behind her. Which is all the more reason to hope she doesn’t send that into Act II with a Harman/Hastings/Reyes fiasco on the Intelligence Committee. Time to move on.
