The late Senator Dianne Feinstein modeled courage & integrity. Today's GOP doesn't even try.
Our world is safer, and our country is stronger because of Diane Feinstein. Just think about her leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee beginning in 2009.
Back then, our country was eight years into its war on terror. For several years, the CIA had operated a network of “black sites,” where they tortured people for information on planned attacks. The CIA did not call it torture. They preferred to say they used enhanced interrogation techniques. In 2009, the Intelligence Committee first heard evidence of what those interrogation tactics were: waterboarding, confining people in a coffin, slamming them against walls, forcing them into painful positions for hours, depriving them of sleep, telling them that they would be forced to watch as their mothers were brought in and sexually abused.
Diane Feinstein argued that this had to be investigated by the Senate, and after a 14-1 bipartisan vote of the committee, that’s what she did. President Obama had signed an executive order ending the torture, and he wanted peace with the CIA. The CIA wanted to avoid any culpability for its behavior and stonewalled the investigation. When Feinstein would not be put off, they went further and broke into Senate computers, accused Senate staffers of unauthorized taking of documents, and orchestrated a set of Sunday talk show appearances to undermine the investigation and the investigators. Senator Feinstein kept her head down and persevered. She did not engage in a public fight.
The late U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein D-California.
Only once, when every other option seemed foreclosed, did she go to the Senate Floor to talk about what she was up against. She prevailed:
“The release of this 500-page summary of our report cannot remove that stain, but it can and does say to our people, and the world, that America is big enough to admit when it’s wrong and confident enough to learn from its mistakes. Releasing this report is an important step to restore our values and show the world that we are in fact a just and lawful society.”
Her torture report is 6,700 pages of detailed investigatory work. It resulted in a reckoning within the CIA that will go a long way to preventing future abuses. It led to a renewed sense around the world that America plays by the rules, hold people accountable, corrects itself. It reminded everyone, at home and abroad, that we value the rule of law, transparency, and human dignity.
We are stronger, safer, and a better model for people everywhere who aspire to freedom because she had the courage, integrity, and the determination to carry out her proper oversight function.
But this is not an obituary, it is a comparison. Because if the late Senator showed the world what legislative oversight in a democracy is all about, the House Republicans are showing the world what a broken, partisan, perverse, and pathetic legislative body looks like.
The have launched an impeachment process targeting President Biden. That inquiry is not predicated on any facts, and their lead witnesses said they saw nothing that could be a reason to impeach. Yet hearings, very public hearings, they will have.
They already have open up an inquiry into the weaponization of government. See above, on Impeachment to understand what weaponization of government actually looks like. The only abuses the committee can find are either during the Trump Administration or when they look in the mirror. No matter. The show must go on.
What these two so-called farcical wastes of taxpayer money have in common is that they provide MAGA with a stage set for the sound bites they want on Fox, Rumble, and other fact-free echo chambers.
Meanwhile, they cannot pass a bill to fund the government. They cannot even pass a bill to fund the military. Theirs is oversight that makes us less safe and every day the weaken us at home and abroad.
This isn’t even partisan anymore. It’s just destructive. These are, after all, the same folks who threw conservative Republican Liz Cheney out of their party. They are the ones who made it impossible for Mitt Romney, the party’s former Presidential nominee, to continue his service in the Senate. These are the ones trying to interfere with the Justice Department and with State prosecutors to put an end to investigations of the former president, who, let’s remember has been found by judges to be both a rapist and fraud. Now they look to be on the verge of tossing out their own Speaker, Mr. McCarthy.
We have two models. Senator Dianne Feinstein and others like her who work diligently, effectively, and constructively to lift America up. Kevin McCarthy and his ilk in the House who can only tear us down.
Our job this year is to do all we can to be sure Americans know the difference.