Today the New York Times reports on the continuing failure of the Michael Mukasey as Attorney General experiment. Back in November we at the Courage Campaign didn't much like the notion of an Attorney General Mukasey, but Senator Dianne Feinstein strongly disagreed. She got a lot of pushback and defended her case in an LA Times OpEd that she might want back at this point given the way reality has actually played out. Let's play point/counterpoint between Feinstein's argument in November and the New York Times today:
Feinstein:
During a long career in public service and private practice, Michael B. Mukasey has forged an independent path as a lawyer and federal judge.
Sen. Arlen Specter:
"I don't want to use the word 'disappointed,' but he hasn't provided the balance that I had hoped for"
you're such a pushover -- i know its HARD work bein' a dem :-)
John Rapf wrote:
Too much for one reading. I cut to the end. I agree. Off to the bar! - JR
----- Original Message -----
From: Becky Curry
To: John Rapf ; CDPRuralCaucus@yahoogroups.com ; TBRC-Council@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2008 3:42 PM
Subject: Re: L' affair du Singh and Feinstein Censure
i agree w/the whole gabriel thing - he is doing nothing to foster party building -- he's really mad about something, and feinstein just happens to be the target d'jour.
ooooh more french :-)
however, while i think that we get distracted sometimes by the resolution of the moment and I think this feinstein thing is the biggest waste of time i can imagine, (at times i feel like it's a way to distract us about where to put this word or that word in order to keep us from focusing on the big picture and allowiing people get lost in the minutiae of the process)
People are losing focus. Feinstein has a good record on most of the practical stuff I care about.
If we are not faulting Obama for sliding on this one, what's the percentage in getting our knickers twisted over her unsurprising and predictable positions regarding 'national security' and 'terrorism'?
However, I diverge from John about being an activist regarding issues and the policy that results.
I believe it is extremely important for local dem clubs to be activists about issues - issues and policy are what make us Democrats, not candidates who are nice and make us feel good.
And I believe it is up to us to let our elected people know where we stand on issues - we elect them, this is not a feudal system.
Those issues drive our candidates and drive the activism behind a candidate, you know, that stuff that gets them elected?
Our job is to reach out and carry the democratic message and policies to the peeps and put candidates forward who will
embody our policies and provide solutions to what we know are the issues that need addressing.
We have been working in LC on single payer health care for close to two years, we have followed legislation, written letters, we have gone to rallys with our labor folks, we have hosted forums, networked w/retirees, other dem groups, we called big time b.s on the 'compromise' that our State Dem leadership tried to cram down our throats early in the year.
We have instigated a campaign that is spreading out, to have citizens call upon their local elected jurisdictions to actually DO THE MATH, and see what the savings would be to taxpayers if California passed single payer.
Sheila Kuehl walks on water as far as i'm concerned (and i bet she's nice and she does make me feel good :-) )
We have written numerous ltte to the local media, staking out our ground as dems on the issue, we brought "sicko" to our teeny little commercial theater by working with many other groups in the county, to packed houses for several showings a day for 4 days i may add.
i would venture to say that if anyone asked who has done the most to bring the message of single payer and a modicum of understanding about the issue, into the mainstream conversation, in LC they would say 'the local democrats'
Same with the war, while we dont spend all month every month focusing on activism, we feel we must stake out the territory and define the ISSUE as democrats -- and sometimes it comes to us in the form of actions from other dem orgs.
LC endorsed and wrote to all our federal legs, urging them to consider endorsing the responsible plan 3 months ago.
i'm glad to see the uber liberals in alameda county catching up :-)
In order to define ourselves, frame our message, and take control of the dialog we must take positions on issues.
Thanks to Bob Brigham, who brought these to us in Austin, we have a number of buttons that read "iCensure DiFi" - you see mine at right:
(also pictured are buttons for the heroic Darcy Burner)
We've passed out several dozen already to Californians and others who support holding our Senator accountable for her repeated failures on the Constitution and on protecting the rule of law. Interestingly we're distributing them while Harold Ford is speaking.
There's a lot of talk this year about more and better Democrats. Generally the "and better" part means primary campaigns and being selective in the candidates that we support with time, money and cyber ink. The other side of that is holding our representatives accountable in ways outside the ballot box, because sometimes we can't just wait for re-election to get responsive representation; too much happens. It's not always easy to find effective ways to get attention and movement, but passion and creativity can be combined into a potent mix.
Last week Senator Dianne Feinstein voted to give away our 4th Amendment privacy protections and grant retroactive immunity to the telecom companies who may have been illegally complicit in domestic spying on U.S. citizens. It was hardly the first time that Sen. Feinstein has given us reason for serious concern. Once before, her support of previous iterations of FISA legislation, Judge Leslie Southwick and now-Attorney General Mukasey inspired us to insist she pay attention to Californians. We asked you whether it was time to pursue censure again, and more than 12,000 of you responded with a clear message.
Rick Jacobs sent an email this morning running through the results, explaining where we go from here, and asking you to help:
"A Heavy Heart." That was the subject of the email I received today from Senator Chris Dodd. After fighting tooth and nail for many months, with a coalition cobbled together on the fly, brought together by a fundamental drive to protect the Constitution, the Senate was finally able to force through a new FISA bill including retroactive immunity for telecom companies.
It's been an educational road for netroots activists in particular and Democratic activists in general. Developing effective methods of demanding and receiving accountability from out elected officials is still a work in progress. But in a number of very encouraging ways, the FISA fight over these many months has helped uncover what ideas held promise and afforded the chance to refine them. We may not have won this one, but we sure as hell made it a lot harder along the way.
A number of Democrats abandoned the Fourth Amendment to vote for immunity, including Senator Dianne Feinstein. It's been a relatively tough year for the Constitution when Feinstein's been faced with challenging votes, and this sadly was no exception. But it's important to hear Senator Dodd's words today:
...let us stand tall, knowing that by working together we were able to make wiretapping and retroactive immunity part of the national discourse these last number of months.
We came together - all of you, Senator Feingold, bloggers like Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald, organizations like the EFF and ACLU, and untold hundreds of thousands of Americans who simply wanted to make sure that this one, last insult did not happen with ease.
I'm sorry we weren't successful.
And so Rick Jacobs put the accountability challenge to Courage Campaign supporters today via email. What are we going to do about it? His email is on the flip.
UPDATE by Dave: Today is NOT the big day. Jesse Helms, in his most positive act as a Senator, died over the weekend, and his funeral will delay the FISA vote until Wednesday. There will be debate in the Senate today, with votes likely tomorrow. You have additional time to call your Senators.
...........................................
The United States Senate will soon vote on whether to provide retroactive immunity to the big telecom companies who broke the law with George Bush and violated the constitution with warrantless wiretaps (beginning before 9/11). From her absurd perch on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein has been leading the push to protect Bush by protecting the telecoms and preventing discovery in the case so the American people never get their day in court and our country may not be able to find out the true extent of shredding of the Constitution that DiFi enabled. Senator Feinstein put our presidential nominee in an awful position with her representation of the administration and made a joke of Art Torres.
Today is the big day and if Senator Feinstein violates her oath of office and does not defend the Constitution, she is likely to face censure again. And while DiFi never responded to the outcry by over 40 wonderful organizations leading the push to censure her, we do know where she stands on censure. You see, Feinstein once pushed her own censure resolution and tell me if the language she used doesn't sound like she thinks she should be censured.
The great statement by Senator Barbara Boxer on how those who vote for retroactive immunity, "are perpetuating a cover-up" is good news for everyone who defends the Constitution. While Sen. Boxer has yet to vow to join the Feingold/Dodd filibuster, the thinking by many seems to be that Boxer will fight hard for what she believes in so many activists I've talked to are excited by anticipated aggressive maneuvering by Boxer to stop retroactive immunity.
As for the other senator...there is a great deal of concern that Senator Dianne Feinstein will capitulate. While defending Senator Feinstein against the push to have her formally censured by the California Democratic Party, Chair Art Torres said:
I said I think it's important that you hear this from me because there's also concern about the telecom immunity issue which will come before the senate judiciary committee. Don't believe me, ask my friend Senator Dodd, who will tell you that she led the effort along with him to make sure that that wasn't in the FISA bill that emerged from the senate judiciary committee. That bill as you know does not include the telecom immunity issue, which was a very important issue for me, and I'm proud that she listened, because she does.
Does she? (202) 224-3841
If not, she is likely to again face a censure push by CDP activists seeking to hold her to account.
Disclosure: I do some work with our friends at the Courage Campaign
The effort moving in the California Democratic Party to officially Censure Senator Dianne Feinstein that is being lead by the Courage Campaign, the Executive Board of the California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus, Progressive Democrats of America, East Bay for Democracy Democratic Club, Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, San Diego Democracy for America, and Sacramento for Democracy is clearly resonating online.
With the traffic on these blogs and the volume of email being sent, I'd predict around 100,000 California grassroots Democrats will know of the censure movement by the end of the day and that number could easily triple by this weekend's vote. And it isn't just the raw numbers, which really are astonishing. It is also the degree to which the message of accountability is resonating with Democrats.
This is a defining moment for the California Democratic Party and there will be a lot of people watching what happens.
Progressives are angry with Dianne Feinstein to a degree that I've never seen before. She followed up the Leslie Southwick nomination with the Michael Mukasey nomination, and this week she may tip the balance on telecom immunity in the Senate Judiciary Committee. This weekend, at the California Democratic Party executive board meeting, she may get a reprimand.
One day after voting to elevate a divisive conservative judge to the federal appeals court in New Orleans, President Bush invited California Sen. Dianne Feinstein aboard Air Force One 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 [...]
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."
Knowing what I know about the e-board, this is not likely to pass. And if it did, it's not likely to mean anything or change any opinion. But it's a symbol of exactly how upset the grassroots is with Feinstein, and how they are grasping for something to express their disapproval.
Democratic Leader Pelosi is behaving in inexplicable ways for someone who wants to lead the Democratic Caucus:
1) Congresswoman Pelosi is supporting the regulation of blogs (and by extension any form of online activism or reporting) under the campaign finance laws. No other media outlet is regulated. It's astonishing that she would do this, given that blogs are one of the few places that there is a strong pro-Democrat pro-liberal message, and that the blogs have gone to bat for Pelosi over and over again.
2) Congresswoman Pelosi is criticizing Senator Feingold's proposal to censure George Bush for breaking the law by wiretapping American citizens without a warrant. This is an issue which (a) has a tremendous amount of support from the Democratic base, (b) has a plurality of support from the American people in general, and (c) is simply not in her scope of responsibility.
If you live in SF, Nancy Pelosi answers to you. Call her offices today. (Try to be nice. The staffer is probably just as frustrated as you are.)
