Sen. Feinstein: Whom Do You Represent?

On Thursday, Sen. Feinstein kept alive a provision giving immunity to telecommunications companies who abetted the Bush Administration's illegal spying program. Feinstein, a member of the Judiciary Committee, had earlier voted against Sen. Russ Feingold's proposal that would have stripped immunity from the legislation. (The House had already approved legislation rejecting immunity for telecoms while strengthening and expanding court oversight of surveillance conducted outside the United States.)
Although Feinstein reportedly wants to consider compromise proposals, it begs the question of why is she willing to defend the principle of illegality.
Surely if the telecoms have broken the law in concert with the Administration, they ought to be held accountable. Instead, she echoes the sentiments of Sen. Rockefeller, that telecoms "should not be dragged through the courts for their help with national security." She argues that such suits are unfair, that telecoms can't fully defend themselves since the issue (surveillance) involves state secrets.
It's worth noting here that the 9th Circuit ruled that the Administration has provided "a cascade of acknowledgments and information . . . [such] that the state secrets privilege does not bar the very subject matter of this action."
Others have written (here and here) that Feinstein's embrace of telecom immunity might be a reflection of her personal connections with the powerful.
These relationships are, perhaps, significant in understanding why she takes positions on issues and legislation contrary to the desires not only of her Democratic liberal constituency, but a broad cross-section of the American public.
What can be said of a Democratic senator with a supposedly liberal political philosophy who consistently votes in support of contrary, fundamentally anti-democratic policies? After all, a broad swath of Americans (liberal and Democratic, or not) rejects retroactive immunity for telecom companies, rejects executive overreach, expresses their revulsion at a wink-and-nudge torture policy, and forcefully repudiates Administration policies that ride roughshod over the basic principles of our constitutional republic. And certainly a large number of Californians don't approve of this administration's policies.
Yet that same public finds that a senator who ought to be in the vanguard of protecting the Constitution and defending the public against an aggressive, law-breaking executive branch, instead stands up for the lawbreaker.
We should remind ourselves that the Bush Administration's disregard of FISA law, the disregard abetted by telecoms and endorsed by Feinstein, is not intended to capture terrorists more effectively, but to arrogantly, unconstitutionally increase its own powers at the expense of the Congress, the law and the American public.
FISA never hindered intelligence agencies in their work. It only required the government to obtain a warrant to do so and even that bar was not set terribly high.
It is this that the Bush Administration arrogantly rejects: the requirement--any requirement--that demands the executive be answerable even in the slightest to another authority, that it, in fact, obey the law.
And it is this that Feinstein supports--a branch of government answerable to no one. That is not the definition, by any standard, of a nation of laws.
That is tyranny.

An Apolitical Military

There was a time when many of us, upon hearing the phrase "Commander-in-Chief," thought first of George Washington. Gilbert Stuart's well-known portrait of a dignified general, later president, conjured thoughts of competency and determination. The last thought that entered our minds was of a partisan leader, one who would pit faction against faction so relentlessly that such partisanship would come to infect the American military.
This, unfortunately, seems to be changing. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) found out first hand the penalty for endorsing legislation to begin the troop pullout in Iraq. The New York Times reports how Tauscher, a senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, was met by American soldiers and an Iraqi official armed with biographical information that stressed critical remarks she made of the administration's conduct of the war. But this "biography" did not include her legislative positions that could be seen as supportive of the troops.
Apart from Tauscher's views or Iraq or anything else, it's not the place of the military to vet our elected representatives with the purpose to distorting their voting records or positions. Indeed, distorted or otherwise, it isn't the place of the military to comment on our representatives at all, in their official capacities as soldiers.
Something similar happened to Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com. He wrote blog entries deemed too critical, apparently, for some in the military. He then cited email from a Colonel Steven Boylan, the spokesman for Gen. Petraeus, who reacted negatively to such commentary.
Here, as with Rep. Tauscher, we see signs of a military intruding into the political life of Americans and their representatives. Surely it need not be said that this is dangerous. One of our national strengths has been an apolitical armed services. It was other countries, third world countries, banana republics, was it not, where militaries were thoroughly ensconced in domestic politics?
So who is responsible for this dangerous intrusion into civilian life? Well, it lies at the feet of the Commander-in-Chief. And as our polarization worsens, as our "leadership" increasingly relies on the likes of Karl Rove, we tread ever closer to that abyss.

A True Accounting

So how much has the "War on Terror" and its components, Iraq and Afghanistan, truly cost the American people? Paul Wolfowitz low-balled and obfuscated with his argument that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for reconstruction. The Bush Administration consistently downplayed the cost of the wars (it would be laughable, were it not so depressing, to read George Bush's words in 2003 that "this economy cannot afford to stand an attack" from Iraq or any terrorist group--as if our economy can withstand the hundreds of billions spent so far).
And yet, as we see more clearly with each passing day, the true costs are not so hidden after all. Consider this laundry list: longterm healthcare expenses for combat wounded veterans (and we all appreciate what those costs can be when we consider our own health expenses); the record price of oil due, in large part, to instability in the region worsened by our actions; interests payments on money borrowed from, among others, China. And the huge rise in oil prices not only costs us more, it pours money into the pockets of oil-rich nations such as Iran and Venezuela, regimes hardly sympathetic to the United States.
And it gets worse. The congressional Joint Economic Committee estimates the total at more than $1.5 trillion. While Republicans disputed the numbers, others have put the price tag at $2 trillion.
Does anyone need to be reminded that Republicans promote themselves as fiscally responsible? Indeed, George Bush is playing that angle even now. After vetoing a domestic funding bill, he observed that "this year alone, the leadership in Congress has proposed to spend $22 billion more than my budget provides. Now, some of them claim that's not really much of a difference -- the scary part is, they seem to mean it."
That's the "scary part," is it? That $22 billion frightens him, does it? No wonder the rest of us are horrified, even if he isn't, at the more than $1 trillion thus far spent on the worst blunder in American history.

Karl Rove and Fear

Karl Rove observes that "the Web has given angry and vitriolic people more of a voice in public discourse," but--quite apart from anger and vitriol--I suspect his greater concern lies here: "People in the past who have been on the nutty fringe of political life, who were more or less voiceless, have now been given an inexpensive and easily accessible soapbox, a blog."
Ah. The voiceless (nutty or otherwise) have access to an inexpensive and easily accessible soapbox, do they? Rove goes on to say that liberal blogs are angry, swear far more than conservative blogs, and that they "often argue from anger rather than reason."
Of course, this is a typical Rovian tactic, to provide an emotion-framed "argument" against your opponent by using, well, emotion rather than argument.
And perhaps not surprisingly, Rove is silent on the likes of Rush Limbaugh and his brethren who, shock of shocks!, use similar emotive persuasion in place of rational discourse.
It's simple enough to do what Rove has done, to categorize then generalize against a substantial segment of the population who, in their various ways, seek to highlight the issues of constitutionality, illegality, incompetence and arrogance plainly manifested by the Bush Administration.
Have a concern about the waste of American and Iraqi lives, of money, in that incompetently executed war? Have a complaint about illegal wiretapping, telecom immunity, officially sanctioned torture? If so, you might want to avoid the use of bad language, of anger and vitriol, and stick to reasoned argument. But that won't help either since people like Rove and Limbaugh aren't too interested in engaging on that level to begin with. Deception, not persuasive argument, seems to win the day
"The dark side of the Web can actually turn off voters," Rove said. That and a refusal to represent the people in a manner that is constitutional, ethical and moral.