Dianne Feinstein

I'm too enraged to write anything thought provoking or witty. The leadership of the Democratic party is a bunch of spineless, cowardly, weak, feckless, cowardly asshats, who all need to be primaried until they die. When they retire from the Senate, we need to primary their retirements. When they die and go to Purgatory (they are too milquetoast, feckless, traitorous and weak to justify their special place in hell, and they sure as shit aren't getting into heaven), I want to primary them there too. Make their lives miserable for all eternity. Seriously, this is beyond pathetic.

How many people failed? The little field where I select who is in the way on my blog form ran out of room before I could add everyone. That's how spectacularly our leadership has failed.

The only thing left to do on this issue is sign the petition over at FDL and pray that the house actually stands up and leads. Of course, that will happen when I start shooting my writing quills out of my nipples, but whatever.

Matt Browner Hamlin has all the gory details on todays spectacular failure of leadership. May God have mercy on their souls.

I should add that Feingold and Dodd were the only ones to rise up and take a stand on this issue in any significant way. (Obama voted the right direction, but never brought it the attention it deserved, which in his position as a candidate he had the ability to really do.) So kudos to them for behaving like Senators instead of little scared children.

In Plato's Republic, the question is put to Socrates, "Who will watch the watchers?" or, "Who will protect us against the protectors?"

Today there were more Senate votes seeking an answer to that ancient question. Here are a few notables:

• (Dem) Russ Feingold's S 3913: Prohibits the government from getting around FISA's court order requirement by wiretapping an individual overseas when it is really only listening in on a person in the U.S. with whom that "supposed foreign target" is communicating.

  Aim: Watches the watchers. Failed: 38-57.
  (Democrats voting nay - Inouye, Pryor and Salazar [Lieberman])

• (D) Feingold's S 3915: gives the FISA Court discretion to impose restrictions on the use of information about Americans that is acquired through procedures later determined to be illegal by the FISA court.

  Aim: Watches the watchers. Failed: 40-56
  (Democrats voting nay - Rockefeller, Johnson, Bayh, Inouye, Pryor and Landrieu [Lieberman])

• (R) Kit Bond's S 3941: Extends from 30 to 90 days the window of time that wiretaps can continue without any ruling from FISA court before the telecoms can petition for removal of the tap.

  Aim: Give the watchers more power.  Passes: by voice vote.

• (D) Ben Cardin's: 3920 To modify the sunset provision from 6 years to 4 so that the next president can amend, and so FISA can keep up with technology.

  Aim: Watch the watchers. Failed: 48-46 [needed 61 to override the GOP defacto filibuster]
  (Clinton not voting)

Plato's answer to this is that "They will guard themselves against themselves. We must tell the guardians a noble lie. The noble lie will inform them that they are better than those they serve and it is therefore their responsibility to guard and protect those lesser than themselves. We will instill in them a distaste for power or privilege, they will rule because they believe it right, not because they desire it."

Plato was overly naive. That's why a system of separation of powers, checks and balances, was devised.

That mechanism ended in America under this President Bush and this generation of Democrats.

Shame.

DiFi described her amendment to FISA repeatedly as the "good faith" amendment.

All it takes is "good faith" and Bush is granted sweeping spy powers. The FISA court merely needs to grant that the Bush Administration acted in "good faith," for them and their telecom companies to be granted retroactive immunity.

What? Why?
What. In. The. World... What the fuck makes Dianne think that she can trust the Bush Administration AT ALL?

Good faith? Jesus God, are you serious, lady? Oh, I didn't notice that you were born just minutes ago and have yet to open your eyes, let alone meet the Bush Administration. So you have no idea what's been happening the last 8 years, obviously, yes?

Di, there is no chance in hell that Bush and the Republicans will agree to any compromise short of complete immunity for telecoms – making compromise impossible.

What Feinstein is aiming to do here is “finding middle ground between the all-or-nothing approach on immunity,” as her
spokesman told The Hill. My, what a cute newborn infant Senator!

Senate Republicans won't agree to Feinstein’s amendments. They have repeatedly acted as proxies for the Bush Administration, especially since the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2007. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly declared his belief that telecom immunity is essential to any FISA bill, and has never shown an interest in breaking with the Bush Administration’s insistence on full telecom immunity.

Ultimately Feinstein and all the other Senate Democrats are going to have to choose between one of two sides – either stand with Senators Dodd and Feingold for our rights and the rule of law, or stand with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their disregard for the law, the Constitution, and America’s basic rights.

Congressional Democrats have consistently tried to avoid open confrontation with Bush, even when the cost is our Constitution and our basic rights. There is no avoiding this one. Senator Feinstein has only one choice open to her if she does not want to give Bush everything he demands.... but, you know, being a new born baby, she doesn't understand that

Much of the freedom loving left spent the last weeks freaking out about California's God-awful shame-factory Senator Dianne Feinstein and her loathsome whoring for evil telecommunications companies. The issue was whether these 'comic book evil' multi-national corporations should be granted retroactive immunity for aiding and abetting George Bush's illegal domestic spying operation.

Pulling a page from Bobby Kennedy's book of awesome, Wisconsin's superhero-tastic Senator Russ Feingold punched the wall and screamed "Fuck That!"

This is the headline of his Press Release:  FEINGOLD AMENDMENT WOULD STRIKE RETROACTIVE IMMUNITY FOR TELECOMS.  Nice.  He's pushing an amendment to the FISA Legislation currently before Senate Judiciary Committee which would allow courts to rule on warrantless wiretapping:

“Granting retroactive immunity for companies that allegedly went along with this illegal program is unjustified and undermines the rule of law. Not only would retroactive immunity set the terrible precedent that breaking the law is permissible and companies need not worry about the privacy of their customers, but it would likely prevent courts from ruling on the President’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program. This program was one of the worst abuses of executive power in our history, and the courts should be able to rule on it once and for all.”

Glenn Greenwald first made the Kennedy connection:

The very idea of "retroactive immunity" for lawbreaking corporations is so radical, so repugnant to the most basic principles of the "rule of law," that only one prior attempt can be found in recent history (at least from my research): the efforts by some in Congress in 1965 to enact a law retroactively legalizing the mergers by six large banks which clearly -- as a federal court found -- were illegal under our nation's antitrust laws.

The banks knew they were violating anti-trust laws when they merged but they did it anyway. And when courts began ruling that their behavior was illegal, they ran crying to Congress that a law be passed granting them amnesty, claiming that they'd poop their diapers and that the consequences would be ruinous if they were held accountable under the law.

But the very concept of retroactive amnesty -- the idea that corporations could break the law and then have their bought-and-paid-for Congress pass a special law legalizing their lawbreaking -- was so profoundly offensive to Sen. Robert Kennedy (who had been the Attorney General when the banks broke the law), as well as then-Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, that the two engaged in extraordinary efforts to try to put a stop to that Congressional travesty.

Nick Katzenbach called it "outrageous"  and "nothing more or less than a private relief bill" which is "no way justified."

Bobby Kennedy said that he "objected to the basic philosophy of retroactive immunization, which might logically be applied to murder or any other crime."

How America's Democrats went from Bobby Kennedy and Nicholas Katzenbach to these scum-sucking cowards like Dianne Feinstein and Jay Rockefeller who frigging plotted in secret for months with Dick Cheney as to how they can protect lawbreaking telecoms from the consequences of their criminal behavior is a pathetic story about the victory of evil over good.

So bravo to Russ Feingold - may America find more men and women like you to replace the wastes of space in the swamp's once stately Dirksen, Russell and Hart buildings.

Dixie Dianne Feinstein played her self-assigned role as secretary to her neo-confederate colleagues Trent Lott and Thad Cochran in preserving white supremacy through the nomination of their judicial minion, former Mississippi Court of Appeals Judge Leslie Southwick, for a lifetime position on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Why is this woman from San Francisco such a neo-confederate?! It's insane. During her tenure as Mayor of San Francisco, her constituents had the temerity to oppose the flying of the confederate flag on public grounds because it is a symbol of hate and white supremacy and they cut down the flagpole rather than allow her to have the flag hoisted up again as she wanted.

Most garbage Democrats excuse thier abhorrent appointment votes with OpEds home that promise that,"despite the nominee's long record of [unconstitutional/racist/homophobic/illegal] actions and his many [unconstitutional/racist/homophobic/illegal] statements made under oath -- I had a really, really nice conversation, off-the-record (when he's allowed to lie), and he promised that he's not a [racist/homophobic/radical monarchist]. And he called me Sir. And I blushed.

Dixie Dianne too wrote a pathetic OpEd where she said "I don't believe he's a racist." Despite empirical evidence to the contrary, she believes.... awwww - like in faeries. And with that to go on, she helped out the boys from Mississippi turn back the clock to the bad old days.

Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein provided the decisive votes to make Mukasey the top law enforcement official in the land despite his testimony under oath that when George Bush tortures people it's not called torture, and his assertion that President Bush is allowed to break some laws if he wants.

The two idiot Senators accepted Mukasey's "assurance to enforce any law Congress might enact against waterboarding." Sadly for Schumer, Feinstein and the American people, Congress in 2005 already passed a law express forbidding waterboarding and other interrogation techniques amounting to torture. And President Bush already issued a signing statement declaring he would ignore it.

In December 2005, Congress passed and President Bush signed the Detainee Treatment Act, including the McCain amendment which barred "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment." President Bush then issued a signing statement for the law clarifying that when it comes to what constitutes "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees," the President proclaimed that he indeed would be the decider:

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

In other words, "Nice law, Congress: Fuck you, I'm King."

Michael Mukasey's "torture is hypothetical" dodge during the confirmation process guarantees that the White House's regime of detainee torture put in place by Alberto Gonzales' secret memos, his own perjury to the Senate and President Bush's signing statement will continue uninterrupted. Senator Schumer's rationale for his vote today is, as Nixon spokesman Ron Nessen once pronounced, "no longer operative."

Democrats' public objections to Mukasey centered on whether water-boarding fit the definition of torture. Raising these objections allowed them to turn the Mukasey nomination into another flashpoint for rallying their base against the Bush Administration's conduct of the War on Terror, but their eventual capitulation also followed their pattern on this issue area: Raise a cry, attack the White House and then give the White House what it wants.

Sound the alarm. Talk tough. Capitulate.

Go ahead and break some laws and let the government clean up after you...because evidently Senator Feinstein is comfortable with that being our new system of justice:

In a statement at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering legislation to extend the Bush administration;s electronic surveillance program, Feinstein said the companies should not be "held hostage to costly litigation in what is essentially a complaint about administration activities."

This is exactly what the Bush administration wants. If the pending lawsuits (filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation) are dismissed because Congress declares AT&T and Verizon immune, we may never find out what really happened with the administration's illegal spying programs.

And the larger outrage is that Feinstein's most recent actions are not isolated. They come in a string of extremely disappointing votes where the senator, because of her seat on the Judiciary Committee, actually had the power to strike down some of the more nefarious points in the Bush agenda.