Skip to main content

Senator Diane Feinstein is one of the foremost enemies of civil liberties in America

Proving that the destruction of
civil liberties is a fully bipartisan
sport:  Feinstein (D) with Chambliss
and Rogers (both R) stand tall in
the saddle to protect the State's
right to spy on you for your
it's own good.
You know it is bad when even Salon agrees with me.

From coverage of Feinstein's intellectually indefensible activities with respect to FISA re-authorization:  

The worst offender during the debate was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who repeatedly argued that requiring even minor disclosure of NSA activities would definitely lead to More Terrorism Everywhere. Feinstein worries that more public oversight of the NSA’s massive spying authority could have a chilling effect on their spying. She claimed that many arrests of “terrorists” on U.S. soil have been linked to information obtained by the NSA’s domestic spying, which is a pretty handy indication that they’re engaged in a whole lot of domestic spying. (It’s also wholly unverifiable and likely bullshit.)
Feinstein then pulled the classic awful senator trick of claiming to support a measure currently up for debate, but explaining that she would still vote against it, because of timing:
In addition to Wyden, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) has offered an amendment that would require the government to declassify the FISA Court’s opinions on surveillance requests. Feinstein said she supported that aim and offered to add his amendment to the intelligence reauthorization bill next year, rather than have it considered in the FISA measure.
“The problem is we have four days and this particular part of the law expires,” she said. “I think this is a reasonable request … we will do another intelligence authorization bill next year and that can be certainly added to that bill.”
There’s simply no time to vote for this thing I ostensibly support! The Merkley amendment failed. Feinstein pulled a similar obnoxious Senate move with Patrick Leahy’s amendment to renew the FISA Amendments for only three years instead of five, initially supporting the measure in committee and then voting against the amendment on the floor — where it, too, failed. Rand Paul’s amendment, which would have required individual warrants for all government requests for electronic records and communications, never had a chance in hell.

Comments

NCSDad said…
But she comes from a one party state and controls enough resources to ward off any primary challenge. Sound familiar?
delacrat said…
NCSDad,

California's primaries are single-open primaries, in effect, general elections, rigged to quash any internal party challengers. The top two finishers then "compete" in a general runoff.

NCADad said…
DC, thanks, I had forgotten.
kavips said…
I was looking for a motive.

What makes sense is that she is angling to get close enough to toss her hat into the ring in 2016.

I'm betting, shy a scandal, she's one of those vying.

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...