Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi, who stumbled badly last week when she publicly backed the failed candidacy of Rep. John Murtha for majority leader, could be headed for another political tumble if she presses ahead with long’standing plans to elevate Rep. Alcee Hastings, a senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, to the panel’s chairmanship.

A Democratic aide says Pelosi has not decided who she will name as chairman of the intelligence panel, but that she was leaning against the current top Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman. Her preferred nominee has long been Hastings, but like Murtha he has his own ethically challenged history. And while the broad outlines of that past are well known, the grimy specifics are only now emerging.

[...] Harman has been under investigation by the Justice Department over her links to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and whether they made a deal, in part, to have AIPAC supporters lobby Pelosi to keep Harman on as the Democrats’ top member of the committee.

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