Mommy Warbucks - Whither the Ethics Investigation?

This from Atlas Shrugs on Senator Dianne Feinstein:

Why did Senator Dianne Feinstein of California suddenly resign as chair of a powerful military appropriations subcommittee last week? That's the question much of Washington is asking, and liberal government watchdog groups are apparently not going to give her a pass on the issue.

They believe her withdrawal is linked to her subcommittee's allocation of millions of dollars in defense contracts to companies partly owned by her husband.

The story began two months ago when Metro Newspapers, a group of alternative weeklies in northern California, laid out an impressive array of defense contracts that had been awarded to Perini Corp. and URS Corp., both of which Ms. Feinstein's husband, financier Richard C. Blum, maintained an ownership stake in.

The articles detailed several instances in which Senator Feinstein apparently pressed for spending on anti-terrorism programs that benefited her husband's companies. In 2002, she wanted to know from Pentagon officials why Army bases weren't being protected. The next year, she demanded to know why funds allocated for anti-terror protection had not been spent.

As Cybercast News Service reports, "Just over a month later, URS announced a $600 million contract to provide services for U.S. Army bases that included anti-terrorism force protection."

On another occasion, Ms. Feinstein asked a military official when money would be spent on a facility at Hickam Air Base in Hawaii. URS later announced a $42 million contract to build the facility.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of the liberal group Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, told Metro Newspapers that the issues surrounding Senator Feinstein could be huge. "There are a number of members of Congress with conflicts of interest," Ms. Sloan said. "But because of the amount of money involved, Feinstein's conflict of interest is an order of magnitude greater than those conflicts."

Adding to the mystery is that Senator Feinstein's office isn't talking or commenting much on her sudden resignation from a key subcommittee. You can bet that her silence will only encourage reporters to get to the bottom of her reasons for leaving.

I would be lying if I said I just do not understand why the MSM has not started investigating this.

Read More...

Summary only...

Keeping an Eye On CAIR (& Friends): Part 4

Dinah Lord at Maverick News has an excellent post rounding up the goings on today of CAIR and a governmental organization, the Organization of Islamic Conference.

CAIR has persuaded a New Jersey Democratic Congressman, Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr, to arrange for a room for CAIR to hold a meeting tommorow in the U.S. Capitol Building, ostensibly to hold a panel discussion on "Global Attitudes on Islam-West Relations: U.S. Policy Implications." This is little more then a photo opportunity for CAIR propoganda and it is disgraceful that this organization should be given access to our halls of government. Please, contact your elected representatives and let them know that the U.S. government should not be supporting CAIR, an extremist organization with known ties to terrorists, by allowing them space in the U.S. Capitol.

White House
Your Senators
Your Representative

As to the OIC, it is an organization of 57 Islamic countries. According to Ms. Lord, the OIC wants to hold a summit in America to counter the bad publicity that Islam has gotten of late. Given that the membership includes Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, there is nothing of truth or good that can come of such summit. As Ms. Lord further states:

You can also tell the direction they're going with this thing. They're the modern day version of the little boy who cried wolf - only this time they're crying Islamophobia. They've been doing it in the EU (here, here, and here.) Now they want to bring their little road show to the US.

I say look for lots of airport security incidents in their wake - remember the Flying Imams and the stunt they tried to pull after their last little confab????

Read the whole post here.

Update: Republican Members of the House are calling the Democrats on this one. Note also the response from CAIR's spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, who does not deny CAIR's relationship to Hamas, etc., but rather brings up how they interacted with with President Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, before most of the country understood the nature of the radical Islamic threat and CIAR. Read the article here.

Read More...

Summary only...

War Powers of the Congress and the President

As the Democrats in Congress mull over what, if any, actions to take in regards to the Iraq war, Slate has weighed in on some of the Constitutional issues involved.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare wars, fund them, and oversee the way they are fought. Yet the Constitution never says exactly how these powers are to be reconciled with the president's authority as commander in chief. The Constitution surely must empower the president to fight wars effectively enough to win them. That means that war must be conducted under the president's direction, not run by committee.

So . . . .

Could the Congress pass a substantive resolution ordering the President not to send 20,000 more soldiers to Iraq? No.

Once Congress has authorized the president to fight, it has neither the competence nor the [constitutional] authority to tell him which troops should be placed where on the battlefield. Nor can it order him to withdraw particular troops—or particular numbers of troops—by a specified date, as Obama's proposal, among others, would do. Finally, Congress cannot limit the number of troops who may fight.

Can the Congress tell the President to be out of Iraq within 30 days? Yes.

Can the Congress tell the President to limit the battles in Iraq to fighting against al-Qaeda and not the Shia? Probably not under the existing constitutional tests.

While the Constitution provides some bright lines as to the separation of powers between President and Congress in regards to war, there is also a lot of grey area that we may well see tested in the future. This article provides a good overview. Please read the entire article here.

Read More...

Summary only...

ROLE OF CONGRESS IN INTELLIGENCE SHARING. The CRS just released their report on on Congress's role in sharing intelligence between law enforcement and intelligence agencies. I paroused it to see if it addressed leaks to MSM, but it was silent on that issue . . . At any rate, it is an interesting read if for naught else then background on how our intelligence sharing became so truncated in the 20th century as well as a review of FISA today.

Read More...

Summary only...