The self-proclaimed Most Powerful Woman in America, The Imperial Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is a clear and present danger to this country. Let’s begin just prior to when Pelosi took the reigns, just before the drubbing of the GOP. Back in November 2006, just prior to the mid-term election that swept her into power and playing to her home crowd in an SFGate article, Pelosi questioned whether the Iraq Study Group could come up with any proposal that would be different than what Bush was suggesting. One of the Study Group’s primary recommendations was to make diplomatic overtures to Iran and Syria. Now here she is only a few months later, hypocritically snubbing the President for not following the ISG’s counsel and usurping the role of the Secretary of State, while taking credit for implementing recommendations in the report she openly criticized before it was even published.

She also characterized the Republican-led 109th Congress as a “freak show”. She seemed confident that -in her words- although half the country had never heard of her, they would know who the Speaker was if the Democrats won. Well, they did, and we do. Boy, do we ever… Thus far, in her rookie season as Speaker, she has done nothing but seize every opportunity to take a swipe at the Bush Administration.

Since January, the only accomplishments by House Democrats are a refusal to allow Republican amendments on any legislation in the opening days of the session, a continuing series of oversight hearings, a slap in the face to disabled veterans and a slow-bleed Iraq withdrawal strategy so full of pork that it forces an appropriations chess match between Congress and the President - with US soldiers playing the pawns. A month ago, I examined the Democrats’ committee allocations process and predicted that their priority was to nail the President and that prediction proved to be accurate. That is how the majority -led by Pelosi- has invested the bulk of it’s time and resources to date.

Her recent trip to the Middle East with a delegation of Democrats and a lone “token Republican” was no “blunder” or “gaffe”. It provided a classic example of both her unbridled hubris and her idea of running the country in a bipartisan fashion. She wrongfully injected herself not just in US foreign policy, but also that of Israel and then she bifurcated by staking out mutually exclusive positions that her trip was both a fact-finding mission and an articulation of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy positions. Vice-president Cheney has already voiced the Administration’s displeasure at Pelosi’s trip, making the fact-finding comment a bald-faced lie.

In particular, her stop in Syria to hobnob with dictator Bashar al Assad has been roundly criticized in both conservative as well as liberal media. Her trip has been characterized as “grandstanding”, “dangerous”, “daffy”, “foolish” and a plethora of other pejoratives -  and rightfully so, yet Pelosi dismisses the criticism. During an appearance with Tom Lantos (D-CA) designed to defend her little adventure, when asked if a trip to Iran was in order, Lantos suggested he would “be ready to get on a plane tomorrow… and knowing the speaker, I think that she might be.” Pelosi did not dispute Lantos.

Finally, Pelosi has injected herself into the debate over Don Imus’ comments.

In her statement, she praised the 35th anniversary of Title IX, and spoke of celebrating the achievements of women, rather than denigrating them.

Nancy Pelosi always has something to say about unequal rights for women in America, while safely ensconced in America, yet she has no compunction in lowering her status abroad by covering up with one of the many headscarves she reportedly packed. She complains about the glass ceiling and inequality in America, but never about the plight of Muslim women being stoned to death for mere allegations of adultery, burned and disfigured with acid, subjected to genital mutilation or any of the other uplifting cultural traditions that await many of them.

Pelosi’s donning of the headscarf shows that she either wants to throw a wrench in the President’s plans so badly that she’s willing to self-deprecate from the status of the Most Powerful Woman in America to that of mere chattel, or perhaps a better explanation is that after her marathon flight to the Middle East and the substandard accommodations of her only slightly-larger jet, she may have been looking a little bit “nappy-headed”.

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