XPost: la.general, alt.politics.media, rec.arts.tv.comedy.colbert-report   
   XPost: dc.politics   
   From: gavin.newsom.black.penis.sucking.democrat@disney.com   
      
   This is hardly the first time Adam Schiff has had Russia on his   
   mind.   
      
   Years ago, and long before he was elected to the U.S. House of   
   Representatives, Schiff was a United States Attorney in Los   
   Angeles who led the prosecution of an FBI agent  convicted on   
   spy charges.   
      
   “Sex for secrets,” he recalled in a telephone interview with the   
   Jewish Journal last month. “He was seduced by an attractive KGB   
   asset named Svetlana — they’re always named Svetlana. I had to   
   work extensively with the FBI even though it was the first time   
   an FBI agent was ever indicted for espionage. … It’s so odd to   
   be working on a case again involving the bureau and Russia. But   
   it does feel like it’s come full circle.”   
      
   Congressman Adam Schiff, 56, is one of 18 Jews serving in the   
   House, and these days, one of the most prominent of the   
   chamber’s 193 Democrats. He’s been everywhere lately — a guest   
   on CNN and MSNBC, a focus of stories in The New York Times and   
   The Washington Post. His Twitter following is growing   
   exponentially. Already, people are suggesting he could become a   
   presidential candidate in 2020.   
      
   And all this for one reason: Schiff is the ranking member — the   
   top Democrat — on the House Permanent Select Committee on   
   Intelligence, which is investigating whether the Russian   
   government interfered with the 2016 presidential election and   
   whether anyone in the Trump campaign had a role in it.   
      
   With Democrats in the minority, Schiff has only so much power in   
   setting the panel’s agenda. Nonetheless, he has emerged as a   
   forceful counterweight to President Donald Trump’s defenders,   
   who insist the current investigations into Russia’s election   
   activities — the Senate and FBI are holding their own probes —   
   are little more than politically motivated witch hunts designed   
   to undermine the Trump presidency.   
      
   “The American people do have a strong center of gravity that   
   will constrain [Trump’s] worst impulses, so I’m a believer in   
   our democracy.” — Adam Schiff   
      
   Undaunted, Schiff is pressing ahead, an effort that draws   
   together the most salient parts of a life in public service —   
   his Judaism, his law background, four years in the California   
   Senate and his 16-plus years in the House — not to mention his   
   role as a Big Brother to a young African-American boy who   
   Schiff’s father, Ed Schiff, says made Adam “a better person.”   
      
   It’s a foundation that also has cemented his confidence in   
   American institutions despite the current chaos of Washington.   
      
   “I think our democracy is resilient enough; we’ll get through   
   this, I think, even if the president doesn’t operate within   
   established norms of office,” Schiff said. “The American people   
   do have a strong center of gravity that will constrain his worst   
   impulses, so I’m a believer in our democracy. I think we’ll get   
   through this. But certainly, there are some rough roads ahead.”   
      
   Schiff was born in Boston in 1960, a few months before John F.   
   Kennedy was elected president, as the younger of two sons to Ed   
   and Sherri Schiff. Theirs was a mixed marriage: Ed, who now   
   lives in Boca Raton, Fla. — “living the ‘Seinfeld’ life,” his   
   son said — is a Democrat; Sherri, who died around 2009 of   
   complications from Alzheimer’s disease, was a Republican.   
      
   Ed Schiff was a businessman who moved around the country as a   
   regional sales director for Farah, a men’s pants manufacturing   
   company. Sherri, “bored with country club life … went into real   
   estate, where her boss said, ‘You are wasting time writing copy.   
   Why don’t you get into sales?’ ” Ed said.   
      
   After a few years of living in Arizona, the Schiffs moved in   
   1970 to Contra Costa County in the Bay Area, where Ed got out of   
   the “rag business,” as he called it, and purchased a building   
   materials yard.   
      
   In those days, Adam was a studious boy who, according to his   
   father, always did his homework, adored his mother and had a   
   friendly sibling rivalry with his older brother, Dan, a   
   relationship Adam would later write about in a screenplay —   
   never produced — called “Common Wall.” Adam became a bar mitzvah   
   at Temple Isaiah, a Reform congregation in Lafayette, Calif., in   
   June 1973.   
      
   “I certainly do remember making tape recordings of my [bar   
   mitzvah] practice sessions on cassette tape with a little   
   cassette recorder, and I think I may even have one of those,”   
   Schiff said. “It’s funny to hear your voice back then.”   
      
   In 1978, he entered Stanford University. A pre-med student, he   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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