The Pelosi plague

 Miranda Devine:

Nancy Pelosi used to point her angry finger at Donald Trump, but she leaves him for dust when it comes to busting norms, dividing Congress and causing mayhem. If anyone is to blame for the hyper-partisanship in Washington these days, it’s the spiteful House speaker.

She behaves more like a Mafia don waging a gang war than a dignified, fair and honest presiding officer, which is what the speaker’s role requires.

Pelosi abuses her power in ways that once were unthinkable. Her speakership has been the antithesis of Lincoln’s entreaty to “the better angels of our nature.” Everyone in Congress — and by extension the nation — has been sullied by the spite and vitriol she has injected into the political sphere. There is no grace or Christian charity, just the barren wasteland of the zero-sum game, power for power’s sake.

It’s made all the worse by her increasingly frantic claims to be a “devout Catholic.”

The fact that all this venom is packaged in the shape of a small, elderly, expensively shod woman has bestowed upon her an element of deference her actions do not deserve. But last week there were a couple of signs that she’s finally worn out her welcome.

One was her game-playing over the Jan. 6 select committee, when she arbitrarily rejected two Republicans — Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana — from an already stacked panel.

She claimed “integrity” required her veto since the two Republicans had “made statements and taken actions that I think would impact the integrity of the committee.”

Hah. This is a committee which includes such models of integrity as Adam “Steele Dossier” Schiff.

Pelosi is scared of Jordan and Banks, even though she has the majority. That’s the real reason. She is afraid they will bring to the committee, on behalf of the American people it is supposed to represent, the very reasonable question about her own culpability in the events of Jan. 6. Most obviously, what was her reason for leaving the Capitol Police outnumbered and unprotected? Jordan and Banks wanted to ask why Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund’s request for the National Guard to buttress his troops was denied? Why were his repeated requests to the Sergeant at Arms — who answers directly to Pelosi — rebuffed? We’re talking about repeated requests, from two days before the riots to hours after the Capitol was breached. Why did she blame Sund and force him to resign hours after the riot, and then lie the next day when she said he hadn’t bothered phoning her? It stinks.

“Nancy Pelosi is not interested in an investigation. She’s only interested in a narrative,” Banks told Fox News Sunday.

“Once you go up to the top of the flagpole of who is in charge of the Capitol Police . . . Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, has more control and authority and responsibility over the leadership of the Capitol Police than anyone else in the United States Capitol. So, she doesn’t want us to ask these questions because at the end of the day she is ultimately responsible for the breakdown of security at the Capitol that happened on January 6th.”
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Add to this the fact that the FBI is coming up empty in finding any proof of her original allegations about events on January 6.  Misdemeanor trespassing and "parading" in the Capitol building are not evidence of the insurrection she falsely alleged.  Holding people in solitary confinement for such offenses is cruel and unusual punishment.