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

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.

Believe me, I marched. Must've lost 10 pounds marching in '03 and where did it get us? Got me arrested multiple times. A million people on the streets of New York got about 3 paragraphs on A10 in the Times, and that's about it. Sure, let's march again and then we can all call our representatives and beg them to maybe fucking represent us for once...

I don't want to sound like a hater, but I don't see how "standing up" again is going to change a damn thing. We the people are just along for the ride at this point. How many more messages can we send to our elected representatives before they act? Honestly and truly, they won't.

There is nothing we can do as private citizens to stop the Bush administration from doing whatever they want short of armed revolution (which I am not advocating, don't get me wrong). Until the corporations get sick of the status quo, no amount of people power can bring this corrupt regime down.

But where the hell is he ...from?

Very accented English...Eastern European, maybe.

Non-native certainly.

I think...against better impulses ...that it's important.

Impeachment is the cure.

Impeach Cheney and Bush immediately.

Withdraw all funding for the Iraq occupation.

I see Ondelette and DCLaw1 have already explained what I was trying to say- only clearly and concisely. It is a relief.

That scene in Ghandi, where his followers walk towards the factory guards- and their billy clubs- in waves, the women carrying the beaten and bloodied away for the next wave to advance- that would be something to see in our country today, wouldn't it?

...even while it watched the hand slowly turn up the thermostat.

Thanks, Glenn. I've enjoyed your series of articles on the overreach of claims of executive privilege by this administration.

I want to point out something that I don't think has gotten enough attention in the various discussions of this controversy. The very existence of this privilege in our jurisprudence implies that it has limits. This administration has been acting, as you have pointed out numerous times, as if executive privilege is a limitless one to be asserted at the executive's will. Were this the case, then we would not need the privilege per se. The fact that it exists in the first place by definition means that there are matters within the executive branch that do no obtain.

Keep up the good work.