I wish I could say I made all that up...that it was just a joke...that our only issues were partisan bickering in DC...sadly I can't. I am flat out shocked by it all...angry, sure...but more shocked than anything else. I couldn't make a story like that up and if I did people would probably classify it as science fiction it's so far out. I approach it with the idea that I'll take the time to put the info on the table and let you decide how you feel about it. If you come to the conclusion there is something wrong on your own that's a far greater thing than me convincing you. Watch more of Comey's testimony and I think what you'll see from him is the sadness that pours out of the man due to what has become of the DOJ. He seems like a decent guy.

I understand your concerns about media bias and this is why I've tried more and more to put actual evidence in my posts not quote news stories. Not that I think you can't quote a newspaper or that I think there is a bias problem (I think it's more a competence problem) but I know that there is a great deal of suspicion about the media. So, I'll throw in video of the hearings or link to actual documents. I think that's good in that you see what a reporter would see and can make your own decision on it without the filter of a reporter or talk show host or whatever giving it to you. I think the problem with doing this is that all you get is a document or some testimony and you have to sort out what it means on your own. Some people can do this, some people can't. It's not a matter of somebody being too dumb to get it, it's generally a matter of a lot of this stuff being so damn confusing. This to me is where the media most often fails, they don't make clear the meaning of the story or it gets twisted. It may get twisted due to bias...sure that happens...it may get twisted to what will sell the most papers or get the most people to watch or listen...it may get twisted because the people who own the network or paper don't want to get sued or lose advertisers. I'm pretty certain the latter issues are more to blame than bias.

Really you should watch Bill Moyers show on the media and the war that Block posted:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/video_popups/pop_vid_btw1-1.html

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

It's five parts but well worth sitting through. He does a great job of showing how the media works and how they fail us. I don't know how you feel about Moyers but I think he is often a true voice of reason and does some real great work at times.

On Feinstein, don't worry, she'll get what's coming to her.

---------------

http://thehill.com/david-keene/feinsteins-cardinal-shenanigans-2007-04-30.html

Feinstein’s Cardinal shenanigans

By David Keene April 30, 2007

Anyone who knows much about real power in Congress knows that almost every member of the House and Senate lusts after a seat on the Appropriations Committee and hopes one day to achieve the status of Cardinal. The Cardinals, of course, are the folks who chair the various Appropriations Committee subcommittees and literally control the billions of dollars that pass through their hands.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) chairs the Senate Rules Committee, but she’s also a Cardinal. She is currently chairwoman of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee, but until last year was for six years the top Democrat on the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies (or “Milcon”) sub-committee, where she may have directed more than $1 billion to companies controlled by her husband.

If the inferences finally coming out about what she did while on Milcon prove true, she may be on the way to morphing from a respected senior Democrat into another poster child for congressional corruption.

The problems stem from her subcommittee activities from 2001 to late 2005, when she quit. During that period the public record suggests she knowingly took part in decisions that eventually put millions of dollars into her husband’s pocket — the classic conflict of interest that exploited her position and power to channel money to her husband’s companies.

In other words, it appears Sen. Feinstein was up to her ears in the same sort of shenanigans that landed California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R) in the slammer. Indeed, it may be that the primary difference between the two is basically that Cunningham was a minor leaguer and a lot dumber than his state’s senior senator.

Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, or CREW, usually focuses on the ethical lapses of Republicans and conservatives, but even she is appalled at the way Sen. Feinstein has abused her position. Sloan told a California reporter earlier this month that while”there are a number of members of Congress with conflicts of interest … because of the amount of money involved, Feinstein’s conflict of interest is an order of magnitude greater than those conflicts.”

And the director of the Project on Government Oversight who examined the evidence of wrongdoing assembled by California writer Peter Byrne told him that “the paper trail showing Senator Feinstein’s conflict of interest is irrefutable.”

It may be irrefutable, but she almost got away without anyone even knowing what she was up to. Her colleagues on the subcommittee, for example, had no reason even to suspect that she knew what companies might benefit from her decisions because that information is routinely withheld to avoid favoritism. What they didn’t know was that her chief legal adviser, who also happened to be a business partner of her husband’s and the vice chairman of one of the companies involved, was secretly forwarding her lists of projects and appropriation requests that were coming before the committee and in which she and her husband had an interest — information that has only come to light recently as a result of the efforts of several California investigative reporters.

This adviser insists — apparently with a straight face — that he provided the information to Feinstein’s chief of staff so that she could recuse herself in cases where there might be a conflict. He says that he assumes she did so. The public record, however, indicates that she went right ahead and fought for these same projects.

During this period the two companies, URS of San Francisco and the Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass., were controlled by Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, and were awarded a combined total of over $1.5 billion in government business thanks in large measure to her subcommittee. That’s a lot of money even here in Washington. Interestingly, she left the subcommittee in late 2005 at about the same time her husband sold his stake in both companies. Their combined net worth increased that year with the sale of the two companies by some 25 percent, to more than $40 million.

In spite of the blatant appearance of corruption, no major publication has picked up on the story, the Senate Ethics Committee has reportedly let her slip by, and she is now chairing the Senate Rules Committee, which puts her in charge of making sure her colleagues act ethically and avoid the sorts of conflicts of interest with which she is personally and so obviously familiar.

Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, is a managing associate with Carmen Group, a D.C.-based governmental-affairs firm (http://www.carmengrouplobbying.com).