Now let me get this straight.  The incoming speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, wants to install as the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) a corrupt individual who could NOT under any circumstances get a top secret clearance because of past improper behavior.

We are talking here about one Representative Alcee Hastings (D-FL), who was impeached and subsequently removed as a federal judge in 1989.  Now, if you can believe it, he is a congressman-which doesn't say much for the voters of his district.  The reason Pelosi is pushing Hastings into the chairman's job nothing to do with intelligence matters.  She is supporting Hastings out of spite.

Pelosi, you see, has a visceral dislike for the current ranking member of HPSCI, fellow California representative Jane Harman.  And so, Pelosi is booting Harman into the cold and backing Hastings as chairman, character, integrity, and qualifications be damned.

That's par for the course.  After all, Pelosi, who battered the Republicans bloody for the Abramoff scandal, Pagegate, Duke Cunningham and other ethical peccadilloes, is currently batting zero in the "let's select people of sterling character" division of the House of Representatives.

Last week, for her second in command she pushed her old pal and supporter John Murtha (D-PA).  Murtha, who was cited as an unindicted co-conspirator in the ABSCAM scandal of the 1980s and who has a history of inserting earmarks favorable to his big contributors into congressional legislation.  Murtha was defeated, thank the good lord, by veteran Maryland representative and straight-shooter Steny H. Hoyer.

Now she's sponsoring the impeached Hastings, who according to published accounts took a $150,000 bribe while he was a federal judge.  The payoff was for shaving sentences for some convicted Mafiosi.  Nonetheless, unless there's a huge revolt among House Democrats, Hastings, whose financial disclosure forms indicate personal debt in the seven figures, will become privy to our Nation's most closely guarded secrets.

We're not talking the everyday kind of classified briefing either.  The HPSCI chairman and ranking member along with the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), receive classified briefings at a level of classification that no other lawmakers, with the possible exception of the Speaker and Minority Leader, and the Senate Majority and Minority leaders can get.

By law, all of CIA's most closely held covert action programs, as well as NSA's supersecret technical intercept programs must be briefed to this select group.  The majority of intelligence committee members never learn about these supersecret programs.

My question to Pelosi is how she can absolutely guarantee beyond all doubt that her bosom buddy Hastings won't be tempted to peddle his inside information.  It's not inconceivable.  Hastings has traded favors for cash before, and as my police officer foster brother Anthony Mercaldi used to tell me, "Johnny, a perp is a perp is a perp."  Besides, recidivism is a reality of life.  Who's to say Hastings won't backslide?

Now, you may ask - and you should - how Hastings will be vetted for his job as HPSCI chairman when he has the background he does.  The answer is that he won't be subject to a background check.  Congresspersons and senators do not have to take polygraphs.  Nor do they have to make it through a thorough security clearance process.

Their staffs do.  But elected representatives are given a free pass simply because they are elected officials.

Maybe, given Rep. Hastings' background, the congressional free pass security loophole should be closed.  The chances for that happening, however, are somewhere between slim and none.  Why?  Because Congress would have to vote on the change.  And given the choice between doing the right thing, and doing the politically convenient thing, you know how "the best Congress money can buy" will respond to the challenge.