It's Not Just Bush, as shooter242 shows. The Republican Party and our key media outlets are run by people who thought Nixon should never have been impeached. That's why things are as bad as they are now.

Though frankly, we Caucasians have to remember that the rights whose losses we mourn have never fully existed for those among us with darker skins. We've been down this road before, and we can come back better than before. The key is to take back our media from those who would rather suck up to the powerful than to guard our democratic freedoms.

This woman is a disgrace. This is CA and you have to have a D after your name to get elected in many places. She's as phony as Lieberman. We need better Democrats and Republicans. I couldn't agree more. Our system is broken.

Feinstein Resigns

Senator exits MILCON following Metro exposé, vet-care scandal

By Peter Byrne

SEN. Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.

As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer design. She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world to inspect construction projects, some of which were contracted to her husband's companies, Perini Corp. and URS Corp.

Perhaps she resigned from MILCON because she could not take the heat generated by Metro's expose of her ethics (which was partially funded by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute). Or was her work on the subcommittee finished because Blum divested ownership of his military construction and advanced weapons manufacturing firms in late 2005?

The MILCON subcommittee is not only in charge of supervising military construction, it also oversees "quality of life" issues for veterans, which includes building housing for military families and operating hospitals and clinics for wounded soldiers. Perhaps Feinstein is trying to disassociate herself from MILCON's incredible failure to provide decent medical care for wounded soldiers.

Two years ago, before the Washington Post became belatedly involved, the online magazine Salon.com exposed the horrors of deficient medical care for Iraq war veterans. While leading MILCON, Feinstein had ample warning of the medical-care meltdown. But she was not proactive on veteran's affairs.

Feinstein abandoned MILCON as her ethical problems were surfacing in the media, and as it was becoming clear that her subcommittee left grievously wounded veterans to rot while her family was profiting from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It turns out that Blum also holds large investments in companies that were selling medical equipment and supplies and real estate leases—often without the benefit of competitive bidding—to the Department of Veterans Affairs, even as the system of medical care for veterans collapsed on his wife's watch.

As of December 2006, according to SEC filings and www.fedspending.org, three corporations in which Blum's financial entities own a total of $1 billion in stock won considerable favor from the budgets of the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs:

Boston Scientific Corporation: $17.8 million for medical equipment and supplies; 85 percent of contracts awarded without benefit of competition.

Kinetic Concepts Inc.: $12 million, medical equipment and supplies; 28 percent noncompetitively awarded.

CB Richard Ellis: The Blum-controlled international real estate firm holds congressionally funded contracts to lease office space to the Department of Veterans Affairs. It also is involved in redeveloping military bases turned over to the private sector.

You would think that, considering all the money Feinstein's family has pocketed by waging global warfare while ignoring the plight of wounded American soldiers, she would show a smidgeon of shame and resign from the entire Senate, not just a subcommittee. Conversely, you'd think she might stick around MILCON to try and fix the medical-care disaster she helped to engineer for the vets who were suckered into fighting her and Bush's panoply of unjust wars.

http://www.metroactive.com/metro/03.21.07/dianne-feinstein-resigns-0712.html

There are alot of threads here. So first, the 'similarities' between this administration and those of Reagan and Nixon: Of course they're similar- in many cases they are the same people. Republicans may not believe in biological evolution, but they sure are familiar with the evolution of strategy and ideology. These same people and ideas who were slapped down during the Nixon collapse did not just go away- they learned. They skulked in the background, regrouping and re-tasking their strategies during Reagan and BushI. They resurfaced and were resurgent during the Clinton administration- finally cresting over Washington during the 2000 "elections".

Like big cats behind a fence, these people have tested the legal, political, and social boundaries of our government- always pushing as far as possible- overreaching wherever they could. The've been doing it since Nixon, learning from their failures and returning to test their re-jiggered strategies.

Nixon was disliked by the media? Voila, the Reagan Administration de-regulates the media industries- allowing for a consolidation of ownership, removing the impetus of competition from the industry, making control and influence easier while obliterating any incentive to push back against the system.

The Neocons continue the work Nixon started, testing Constitutional checks and balances to the breaking point- finding out just how much control Congress can really assert over the executive- playing the clock out. Like the detainment cases that are suddenly abandoned when the courts come close to an actual ruling, they stall and delay judgement as long as possible, operating in the indominable Grey Area of Government Accountability. The situation here is no different- they will do as they wish until Congress forces their hand. They will delay at every step of the process, secure in the knowledge that 8 years was all they were ever gonna get. Impeachment is truly the only recourse- one that is effectively eliminated by their ability to split the Congress.

So, I agree with Glenn's impression that there is nothing truly new here to get upset about, again . They will continue to push the extreme limits of our governments current functionality. They have learned well how to operate within the vague delineation of power our current system truly provides. All notions that our system works as it should- all based on history- are irrelevant, because they assume the civil adherence to tradition that has kept our system functioning since its inception. No more- there is no civility, no compromise. They will work the system until it breaks, either for them or against them. These are the men who will continue to act, in the face of any opposition, until the rest- the observers of history, those who reason and justify and compromise- act themselves.