"As I was wrapping up this post I noticed that Bush's disapproval rating is now higher than Richard Nixon's at his worst. Imagine how Schumer and Feinstein would be groveling if they had to deal with a lawless president who was popular too."

Polls have rated the performance of our Deomocratic Congress lower than Bush's for some time now, Joan. Wake up and smell the Starbucks.

Last summer, when the Senate began committee debates about closing loopholes which permit Private Equity Fund partners to pay capital gain tax rates on income from businesses they manage instead of ordinary income tax rates as normal investment banks like Goldman Sachs do, Senator Schumer, who is quite sensitive to his local constutuency of Private Equity partners, was said to oppose the change.

I sent this to Feinstein before the vote. I suppose it would apply to Schumer also, although I don't know him as well as I know her. It does not appear to have helped, but it did make me feel a little better.

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Dear Senator Feinstein:

When I heard that you were going to support Michael Mukasey for Attorney General, I wrote you a bitter, sarcastic letter, much like bitter, sarcastic letters I have sent you in the past few months. But I am tired of sarcasm. I feel a great weariness and a sense of sad resignation when I think of what is supposed to be my government.

I want to explain to you why I find what you have done so reprehensible and why I am confounded and disappointed at your willingness to give Mr. Bush all he wants in power and wealth in the name of the “War On Terror”.

When I was only eleven years old I spent some time in a small town in Germany. It was 1969, and my father was on a two year contract with Telefunken. It seemed a long time since World War II had been fought, but in retrospect, it wasn’t. Many of my father’s colleagues, men in their late forties or early fifties, surely must have fought for the German army in that war. As a child I was not told everything, but even at that age I knew that any mention of the war would bring on an immediate silence, full of unspeakable pain, and yes, shame. These were adults who had had to dig their mother’s body out of a bombed out house with their bare hands, or walk two thousand miles from a prison camp in Russia. I know you are Jewish and that it is likely that you know many people who suffered horribly at the hands of the German people. I have encountered many victims of the Nazis in my own life. Nevertheless, I remember from my two years in Germany many people, good people, being deeply ashamed that they let the horror happen. Or, lord knows, that they participated in it.

We are not in the 1930s. We are not headed towards a fascists dictatorship. Nevertheless, when I see politicians, such as yourself, making deals with leaders, such as Bush and Cheney, to support candidates who wish to deny that torture is torture and believe the president should apparently have the power to “disappear” someone as efficiently as the Gestapo did under the famous “Nacht und Nebel” decree I feel a bit like one of those adults I encountered as a child. I feel ashamed to be American and to know that torture and denial of basic human rights is being done in my name and with my tax dollars. And I feel ashamed for you that you, with some knowledge I would assume, of what it is like to be treated like an animal should be an active and apparently enthusiastic participant in this process.

Impotence it is. It is sad and instructive to note that the whole damn lot in Congress is apparently 100% impotent. Bush lies, cheats, and steals from our budget to pay his mercenary "contractor" friends. Those who wage any kind of authentic protest (for example, Dennis Kucinich) appear to be comical and even more impotent than the so-called "serious" Senators and Congressmen. Hillary tries to show us she is "serious" by giving Bush the support to go to war, then co-sponsoring an anti-flag burning amendment---Can it get any more stupid than that? How did we get here? More important, how do we return to a time when our elected officials say and do what they honestly feel is best for our country?

Or impotent arrogance.

Take your pick.

I've had it with these wimpy Dems.

Oh, wait: I've said that already.

An amazing and powerful letter.

Many thanks, for saying so elequently what Diane Feinstein needs to hear; that our civl liberties (and those of the "enemy combatants") should never be taken lightly or for granted.

Something inexplicable seems to have happened to DiFi. While never a flaming liberal, she could always be counted on to take the side of individual rights over government intrusiveness and abuse of power.

Since Bush was elected in 2001, she has been a major disappointment, siding with the Administration on a host of ill conceived and even shameful legislation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianne_Feinstein#Wiretapping

According to Wikipedia:

In August 2007, Feinstein joined Republicans in the Senate in voting to modify the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by narrowing the scope of its protections to sharply alter the legal limits on the government's ability to monitor phone calls and email messages of American citizens.[17] Feinstein voted to give the attorney general and the director of national intelligence the power to approve international surveillance of the communications of Americans entirely within the executive branch, rather than through the special intelligence court established by FISA. Many privacy advocates have decried this law and Senator Feinstein's vote in favour of it.

.....

Joan,

Is a well-intentioned guy, who falls down when he allows his natural naivet'e to overwhelm his better judgement. Since he recommended Mukasey, to begin with, he really was between a rock and a hard place. Feinstein has no such excuse.