How Bad Are Things For Jane Harman?
She believes that hiring Lanny Davis as a spokesperson is a step in the right direction:
Rep. Jane Harman has hired lawyer Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky affair, as a media advisor, The Cable has learned.The enlisting of the heavyweight help is the latest sign that the California Democrat intends to push back hard against what she sees as an attempt by current and former national security officials to damage her reputation by providing alleged excerpts from transcripts of her surveilled phone conversations to the press. In the end, Harman may be able to make a public case that she was the victim of an abuse of power, including by the decision of Porter Goss, a former fellow House intelligence committee member turned director of central intelligence, to authorize a wiretap of her. She may also argue that the leaks of the alleged wiretap excerpts constitute a criminal act that merits prosecution.
After what I saw during the last primary election, I am fully convinced that if Lanny Davis was your lawyer, you would get the death penalty for jay-walking. Harman is so screwed.
(via Ben Smith)
SGEW
Wait ‘till she hires Mark Penn.
Zifnab
Comeupance, bitches!
Just Some Fuckhead
Alleged excerpts, that’s a good one. They can be one or the other but not both, methinks.
Goggles Pisano
Perfect, people who leak information should be prosecuted but those who approve, justify and commit torture should not. Man is our world broken.
Tom65
@SGEW: Win
For the trifecta, she could hire Terry McAuliffe
SGEW
@Tom65: But I kinda liked Terry. When he was drunk.
Doodoobutt
I am one of her constituents, and I want this bitch and DiFi sent packing. I am tired of DINOs in California. Especially in California. If we’re going to get tarred and feathered for being underminers of “real ‘Mericun values” anyway, we may as well walk the walk and get that vital center moved left some.
Mr. Stuck
The last time I checked Davis was busy trying to screw union members out of the open ballot law.
It’s the “they’re all out to get me” defense. Maybe she should hire Martha Stewart for decorating tips and reputation CPR.
gex
@Tom65: Well, we might as well call in Shrum too.
Mr Furious
Well that clinches it. As if I already didn’t want Harmon to go down in flames…
harlana pepper
blunk drogging:
Yes, I am drunk. It’s a beautiful day and repubes are suffering an oh so long, tedious and painful death. What’s not to party about?
NonyNony
@Just Some Fuckhead:
In her NPR interview, Harman was contending that the excerpts that had been leaked were not real, hence the “alleged excerpts” would really mean “excerpts from the alleged transcript”.
(Actually my summary goes too far – Harman wasn’t really contending anything, she was spouting stuff and letting people fill in the blanks about what her contention was. She refused to say whether the conversation really happened and insisted that she wanted to see the transcripts for herself to see what was supposedly said. Very weaselly – like she knew she had the conversation, but wanted to leave an impression that she was disputing that the conversation ever occurred.)
aimai
No no, the trifecta is Lanny Davis, Mark Penn, and Bob Schrum. Just typing their names gave me a spasm.
aimai
harlana pepper
And, oh yeah, Harman will just have to take her lumps, poor darling.
harlana pepper
PS - internet dating is so weird, you have no idea
Library Grape
echoing my comment in the last thread, it’s hard for me to think of someone i hate more than Lanny Davis
asiangrrlMN
Karma, it is the bitch, yes, Jane? I have no sympathy, alleged or otherwise, for her.
Joshua Norton
Harman has always been a “just hold your nose and pull the lever for her” type of Dem. She started giving me the creeps when she was running in the Dem primary against Gray Davis for Governor of California. Apparently other people got the same vibe. She was ahead in the polls and predicted to be a shoo-in for quite a while—then suddenly helloooo Governor Davis.
I think she’ll be gone within the next few election cycles.
Zifnab
@harlana pepper: I once spent three months corresponding with a girl named “LovesBigCans6409”, but when we finally meet it turned out she was a goat.
True story.
KG
I had this idea, a couple years back, to start a PAC dedicated to defeating every incumbent in the next election. 435 new members of the House, 33 new Senators at the national level. The chaos would just be a happy byproduct of clearing out the deadwood corrupt bastards that we get to deal with these days.
Stories like this make me want to do it, that much more.
omen
@Mr. Stuck:
i was going to raise that too. how unsurprising from a clintonista.
JK
Jane Harman also plans to hire Howard Wolfson
LD50
I can only conclude that all the competent Democrats are all already working in some capacity for the Obama administration.
Cat Lady
OT, but we’re all going to die from H1N1, WHO tells me.
You’re welcome.
gbear
OT. This may be hard to believe, but Michelle Bachman says something very stupid in regard to the hate-crimes bill.
If only we could convert her stupid into energy or debt retirement…
JK
@Cat Lady: It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eyFiClAzq8
harlana pepper
Zifnab: I’m “all ears”
I just got done responding to a telephone “questionnaire” by a guy and when he asked what my political affiliation was, he conveniently got a call from his son’s teacher and had to hang up.
He left me a message later saying we were incompatible. Hee.
TenguPhule
How do we convince Dick Cheney, G BUsh and Karl Rove to hire him?
chrome agnomen
“i say to the H1N1, ‘bring it on!’”
harlana pepper
gbear: I switched over to CSPAN last night and Michelle Bachmann was speaking and, no lie, my tortie immediately vomited up the entire contents of her stomach.
TenguPhule
No, if she’d something intelligent and related to the actual workings of the bill, that would be hard to believe.
JK
@gbear: Is there a parallel universe where Michele Bachmann makes statements that are neither stupid nor insane?
Ed Marshall
It’s not about Lanny per se. Lanny is representing the Israel Project at least, and because they work hand in glove by extension, AIPAC. It’s about who is behind Lanny Davis.
chrome agnomen
hey, zifnab, you fooling around with halperin’s goat?
JGabriel
Why all the hate on Lanny Davis? It’s not as if …
Never mind. Carry on.
.
LanceThruster
I think this a great piece: Jane’s Harman Us by Becky Akers
[excerpt] Her riches haven’t kept her from leeching off taxpayers near Los Angeles for seven terms, though they may explain why she pegs herself as “the best Republican in the Democratic Party.”
Corner Stone
@Zifnab:
Methinks harlana pepper’s not the only one schnozzled round here.
Laura W Darling
@harlana pepper: We really should take this to the Open Thread, you know. I’ll pour some wine a bit early and we can dish.
I tried e-Harmony (ugh) a while back and wrote in the “Other things you should know about me space”: “I am very liberal and very pro-Obama. If this is an issue, best be aware of it now.”
A very effective culling, herd-thinning device, to say the least. I used to chuckle at the “close match” reasons the men gave that indicated this might be their key “issue” with me. Sometimes I’d go read their profiles just to confirm. Good times.
gbear
@JK:
The northwestern portion of her district (I still want to give Stillwater and the St. Croix valley area the benefit of the doubt).
Halteclere
@harlana pepper:
I do have any idea – it’s how I met my wife. Who, surprisingly, in a city of 6 million people lived 0.6 miles away at the time.
demkat620
Well, the flu’s gonna kill us all next week anyway so, good luck with that hire Jane.
harlana pepper
Laura W: Good times, indeed! The wonders of modern technology! I guess I must be pretty “evolved” by now b/c such things used to piss me off, but now it just makes me laugh. Or maybe it’s just the fact that republicans are so fucked that just tickles me. Honest-to-god, I felt like I was interviewing for a job.
JK
@gbear: Bachmann and Palin need to cleanse their doors of perception by pulling their heads out of their respective asses
harlana pepper
Halteclare: Success!! Yay!
harlana pepper
I hereby request an Open Thread on internet dating! If we can have threads on sports, I see no reason why we cannot have threads on internet dating stories!! :)
harlana pepper
I sincerely hope everyone is impressed by the fact that I can still spell while drunk. How’s that for criteria?
R-Jud
@harlana pepper:
Sure I do: I married the guy I met through comments on my friend’s blog.
gbear
@harlana pepper:
My experience is that all of the good ones are in cities that you wouldn’t want to live in even if you were paid to do so (and just TRY to get anyone to think about moving north to MN).
harlana pepper
R-Jud: awesome, apparently, it does work some times, sounds like a good new thread to me, hint, hint, John. :)
harlana pepper
Oh, and just to be not totally OT, my ex-bf’s ex-wife reminds me a lot of Michelle Bachmann. From what I know of her, it makes sense.
demkat620
@gbear: Yeah, how about that Hoot-Smalley Act.
She is so stupid.
Laura W Darling
@R-Jud: That makes me very happy. For you two (Bean & kitties), and for serendipity and the magic of the intertubes!
Corner Stone
@harlana pepper:
I’m just gonna throw a SWAG out there and say that at any givent point in time there is a larger percentage of commenters commenting here drunk then there are self identified Republicans in the recent polling.
Or am I projecting?
bago
History begins to judge George. Spoiler alert: It ain’t pretty.
Halteclere
Back in 2005 when I met my wife I was on Match.com. I couldn’t stand eHarmony (got pissed off at the format before completing the profile setup), and had tried some other sites.
I could write a long post providing words of wisdom learned from my internet dating experiences. For example:
Men: Spend an evening looking at other guy’s profiles to figure out how to differentiate yourself from the crowd (research the competition). Post lots of pictures of yourself doing various things (no pictures of you without a shirt, though). Write more than a couple lines about yourself – i.e. be different than all the other guys. When writing a woman ask specific things in a creative way about her from her profile to show that you are paying attention.
Women: Also post several pictures of yourself doing various things. DON’T post any glamor shots! Provide conversation openings in your profile that gives a guy a topic to start a creative conversation from – i.e. “I like to travel” sucks, whereas “This one time I got lost in the subways of Paris …” almost begs for a great response.
Ah, those were the times. I’m so glad I’m married.
binzinerator
@gbear:
Not a good idea. The planet would go supernova and explode into one of the most powerful quasars in the galaxy.
Or we’d experience crushing massive hyperinflation as we all discovered we could each build our own personal Scrooge McDuck money bin to swim in.
omen
@bago:
but if he had more black support, he’d be more popular.
Laura W Darling
@Halteclere: Oh what a turbulent history I had with match.com. No good ever came of it. I’m very happy for you!
Immediate, absolute disqualifier. I don’t care what else the profile has in it, or how buff the man is, this is just tacky as all shit.
Other immediate disqualifier, (aside from men who can’t spell, punctuate or write, or who abuse emoticons and LOL LOL LOL!!)—men who refer to themselves with lower case “i”.
WARNING WARNING!
harlana pepper
Laura W: aahh yes, the shirtless pics! classy stuff
did you ever search females just to check out your competition?
(i did match a few years ago, jfyi)
SGEW
I would join in this discussion of internet dating, but I have already declared that my time for sharing too much is over for the day, when we were discussing exercise tips on the last open thread.
Probably for the best, to be honest.
Laura W Darling
@harlana pepper: A few times I looked at women—I normally didn’t do that because, well, I’m not them and they are not me and I always figure that all you can do is put out there what you really are and see who resonates. My profiles were very “atypical”, I’ll say that much.
When I looked at women it was not so much in terms of sizing up competition, since I never viewed online dating as a sport or a contest—more as an experiment with magnets, if you will—but more out of plain curiosity about who is out there looking? You made me remember one time I read a woman’s profile that blew me away. She was so obviously together and interesting, I emailed her and told her so. Also telling her I wasn’t trying to ghey in or her or anything, but just wanted her to know how much I appreciated the way she expressed and portrayed herself. A really classy profile and a very interesting woman. Never heard back from her. Sigh.
So I guess we’ll just have to keep queering Jane Harman’s thread with our online dating horror stories, huh?
Laura W Darling
@SGEW: Ah c’mon! All I remember about your imagined TMI is that you are thin and buff.
See? Selective memory is in the mind of the reader!
SGEW
@Laura W Darling: If I share any more, this site will have become internet dating, fer cryin’ out loud.
Shouldn’t we be talking about Jane Harman? Or, failing that, dating her on the internet?
ricky
SGEW, if you scroll up to your first post and reread it you will realize you already said it all.
SGEW
@ricky: Eh? Do you mean me enjoying Terry McAuliffe’s performance on tv during the campaign, when he appeared to be rip-roaring drunk? Not caring a whit that his p.r. nonsense was, indeed, nonsensical, unintentionally (or intentionally? ho ho!) giving the lie to the whole enterprise, with his tussled hair, and that devilish gleam in his eye, and . . .
um . . .
[goes and does other things]
HumboldtBlue
John Amato announced at C&L that he’s going to challenge Harman for her seat. If those tabs above actually worked I’d link, but fuck it, I tried like 30 times and failed, so go to Crooks and Liars and see for yourself.
Chris
Lanny Davis is described as “heavyweight help”? Really?
Pbrown
Did she not watch the election and his complete melt down when Hillary didn’t win the nomination? He was more devastated than Hillary or Bill. Lanny Davis in nothing but an incompetent has been Period. And it clearly shows her poor judgment in picking this man as her spoke person and something the Democratic Party should really pay attention to.