[discardorama]

San Francisco is similar in a way. Nancy Pelosi keeps winning with massive margins, simply because of her name and the fact that she's part of the political machine here; and no one goes anywhere in SF politics without the backing of the machine. And the machine prevents viable challengers from coming forth. For all practical purposes, we don't _have_ a representative who will represent us; she just represents the rich and the powerful.

[samstave]

And she is corrupt to the core, maybe almost as much as Feinstein who's husband's company Bechtel was one of the top profiteers in the wars.

[cwp]

And yet, Feinstein was the one who did battle with the CIA to get the torture report published. Establishing that crimes were committed is the first step toward prosecuting the criminals.

I'd be the last to defend corruption, but it's important to point out that these things are relative. A republic can tolerate a little graft and profiteering. It cannot tolerate torture.

[kabdib]

Read about Feinstein and the crypto wars.

She's a lying sack of garbage. Maybe, just maybe she had an attack of conscience about the CIA thing -- my guess is that she realized it would make it out anyway, and decided it would be better to look good on that account than defend something obviously illegal.

[kabdib]

I should add: And then work to have any repercussions be a wrist slap. "Don't do that again, okay?" and a wink.

Just watch. Nothing will happen.

I wonder who the next intelligence committee lapdog is going to be?

[discardorama]

> And yet, Feinstein was the one who did battle with the CIA to get the torture report published.

And she's great at doing just that: throwing the liberals a bone once in a rare while, which keeps them happy (no offense meant). She had no choice about releasing the report: she was going to get booted out of the SIC at the end of the year. If she didn't release the report (as was demanded by lots and lots of people), it would have been impossible to do so after January 1.

In any case: if she hadn't released it, Mark Udall would have, since he has nothing to lose.

[001sky]

but it's important to point out that these things are relative.

This and the CIA never crucified, amputated, or executed men on film for progoganda...which is what we look at now on the news every other week.

Not to mention CIA's lethal drone program (incl. under Obama) has killed, maimed, and injured more innocent men/women/children than the EIA stuff.