You know, Tammy Wynette wrote a song for moments like the one DiFi's facing right now...

[Amerigo Vespucci]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/huffpolitics/

Feinstein Faces Dem Censure After Backing Mukasey

HuffingtonPost.com | Max Follmer | November 12, 2007 at 11:50 PM

One day after voting to elevate a divisive conservative judge to the federal appeals court in New Orleans, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein was the president's guest aboard Air Force One. She had been invited to survey the damage from the recent spate of Southern California wildfires. The senator later remarked privately that she found her conversation with Bush aboard Air Force One "illuminating," a source close to Feinstein told the Huffington Post.

Two weeks later, Feinstein was one of two Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee to vote to send Michael Mukasey's nomination to be the new attorney general to the full Senate. Her support helped turn the tide in favor of a nomination that faced an uncertain future after Mukasey refused to say whether waterboarding was torture. When the full Senate voted, Feinstein was one of only six Democrats to vote in favor of confirming Mukasey.

Now, a coalition of progressive Democrats upset with Feinstein's controversial votes will ask the California Democratic Party to censure her at its executive board meeting this weekend, the Huffington Post has learned. The move comes as Feinstein again finds herself under fire for saying Thursday that she now supports granting legal immunity to telecom companies that shared customer email and phone messages with the federal government as part of the warrantless surveillance program.

"Dianne Feinstein does not listen to the people of California," said Rick Jacobs, president of the Courage Campaign, a progressive organization in California. "She supports George Bush's agenda time after time."

TAMMY WYNETTE
Stand By Your Man
(Tammy Wynette/Billy Sherrill)

Sometimes its hard to be a woman
Giving all your love to just one man
You'll have bad times
And he'll have good times
Doing things that you don't understand

Stand by your man
Give him two arms to cling to
And something warm to come to
When nights are cold and lonely
Stand by your man
And tell the world you love him
Keep giving all the love you can
Stand by your man

But if you love him you'll forgive him
Even though he's hard to understand
And if you love him
Oh be proud of him
Cause after all he's just a man

Stand by your man
Give him two arms to cling to
And something warm to come to
When nights are cold and lonely
Stand by your man
And tell the world you love him
Keep giving all the love you can
Stand by your man

Stand by your man
And show the world you love him
Keep giving all the love you can
Stand by your man

[blm]

1. Feinstein, Reid, Lieberman, Pelosi and Schumer are puppets for powerful Dems who

cannot have their names attached to the continuing protection of BushInc at this time. They're busy pretending they've been LEADING the battles against BushInc this entire time.

[Kolesar]

2. Well, I think that Reid and Pelosi are notably incompetent and off message

They have about nothing to say to advance Democratic causes and come up with some stupid ideas. The two certainly have *no* idea how to deal with the powerful militarist message. (And it is powerful. There are a lot of messages that Americans believe in that the gops are still exploiting).

As for Lieberman, his motivation is *probably* that he wanted Saddam crushed because he aided terrorist groups that are opposed to Israel. More expedient than diplomacy or compassion for the Palestinians.

[RufusEarl]

3. If i heard correctly, on Democracy Now!

She plans on voting against holding telecoms responsible for supporting government wire tapping. If true, censure not strong enough imho.

Peace

[Amerigo Vespucci]

4. That's true...I posted a story on that subject a couple of days ago.

So yes, taking her "accomplishments" as a whole, censure is a mild rebuff.

:patriot:

[Kolesar]

5. You know, in Britain people pretty much assume that their phones are wiretapped

...and that they have no private phone calls.

http://www.slate.com/id/2136147/

Wiretapping, European-Style.
Think Bush's warrantless NSA surveillance is bad? Wait till you hear what the British government does.
By Eric Weiner
Updated Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2006, at 6:39 AM ET

For Europeans, scolding the Bush administration for everything from Guantanamo to the Iraq War to secret CIA prisons has become a full-time job. But when it comes to the American scandal over President Bush's warrantless wiretaps, there's been a curious reaction from the other side of the Atlantic: silence. Where is the European outrage?

European restraint may arise from a fear of hypocrisy. The fact is that in much of Europe wiretapping is de rigueur—practiced more regularly and with less oversight than in the United States. Most Europeans either don't know about this or, more likely, simply don't care.

The extensive European taps are not new developments, made in the heat of passion after the London and Madrid bombings. European governments have been bugging phones for decades. In theory, the European Convention on Human Rights forbids "arbitrary wiretapping," but, as we've learned in the United States, arbitrary is in the ear of the wiretapper.

The three worst offenders are not countries you would suspect of playing fast and loose with civil liberties: Britain, Italy, and the Netherlands. Italian officials conduct tens of thousands of wiretaps each year. Technically, judicial approval is needed but since judges in Italy are "investigative," meaning they act more like our prosecutors, there is essentially no check on law enforcement's ability to eavesdrop.

In Britain, police have an even easier time tapping phones. The home secretary, a Cabinet minister, approves all wiretaps. Judges have nothing to do with it.

Or, to put it in American terms, imagine Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff authorizing wiretaps of anyone he deems fit—only without the pesky questions from the media and Congress.

Gus Hosein, an analyst with Privacy International, calculates that, given the number of wiretaps in the U.K., the home secretary approves a new wiretap every few seconds. "Obviously, it's impossible to give it the attention it needs," says Hosein. Britain did recently establish an Interception of Communications Commissioner, but he has limited authority; his main job is tallying the number of annual wiretaps. The only Brits safe from wiretapping are members of Parliament, though after the London bombing, there is now a move afoot to revoke their immunity.

Britain's lax attitude toward telephone privacy dates back to the 1920s, when the British government owned the phone company. There was no need for court approval of wiretaps, since, in a way, the government would be asking itself for that approval.