You can rest easier knowing that these are some of the same people who have assured America they’ve created an ironclad system to responsibly safeguard trillions of taxpayer dollars.

From Fox News:

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is the latest lawmaker claiming to have been looted of campaign cash by a Democratic treasurer who’s been likened to Bernie Madoff.

Feinstein’s campaign, which had a cash balance of $5 million on June 30, believes it suffered losses but does not know how extensive they were, according to campaign adviser Bill Carrick.

The campaign is blaming Kinde Durkee, who managed the senator’s finances for years along with the accounts of several other top California politicians. Durkee was arrested and hit with fraud charges earlier this month. U.S. Rep. Susan Davis, D-Calif., told her contributors in a letter released Monday that her campaign was robbed of about $250,000.

Feinstein’s office said the senator was “wiped out” along with the other lawmakers, according to the Los Angeles Times.
[...]
Durkee had authority over more than 400 bank accounts, including political campaigns, according to the federal complaint filed earlier this month.

Would it lessen the impact for the “victims” if they knew Durkee might have turned around and donated at least some of the money right back to Democrats?

More:

[Rep. Susan] Davis is missing more than $250,000 from her reelection committee. Loretta Sanchez has already declared her $379,000 campaign war chest was “nearly wiped out” by Kindee. The Los Angeles County Democratic Party reported that it lost at least $200,000, while California Assemblyman Jose Solorio (D) may be out as much as $677,000.

And dozens of other campaign committees have yet to declare whether they suffered losses as well.

As of right now Feinstein is unable to determine how much money fell prey to the campaign treasurer’s alleged self-imposed stimulus:

Feinstein said she and her campaign staff have been unable to access all their bank records at this point because Durkee alone controlled access to the account, which has made it difficult for them to assess how much money is gone.

Does this seem like the type of person to whom you’d give 100 percent control of your accounts?

Over the last decade Durkee had racked up $185,860 in fines from the Fair Political Practices Commission in eight different cases, a sum that FPPC Chairwoman Ann Ravel said points to “quite serious” issues.

Durkee was released on a $200,000 bond, a process that took eight hours because of the time required to endorse over to the court 2,500 checks made out to the “2012 Feinstein Victory Fund” (just kidding… I think).

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

“It’s cratering,” she said of the restaurant system. “Candidly, I don’t think the taxpayers should be subsidizing something that doesn’t need to be. There are parts of government that can be run like a business and should be run like businesses.”

Of course, ideology quickly came into play, because many of Feinstein’s fellow Dems believe that most of business should be run like a government and should be run by government. Here’s Robert Menendez, determined to keep the Senate restaurant under Senate management and throw good money (YOUR money) after bad to make a point:

“[Y]ou cannot stand on the Senate floor and condemn the privatization of workers, and then turn around and privatize the workers here in the Senate and leave them out on their own.”

Not without the bloggers noticing, nope. And here’s Sherrod Brown lamenting the blow to the unions:

“I know what happens with privatization. Workers lose jobs, and the next generation of workers make less in wages. These are some of the lowest-paid workers in our country, and I want to help them,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a staunch labor union ally, said recently. The wages of the approximately 100 Senate food service workers average $37,000 annually.

Really? Workers make more money under socialized systems? Okay, quick, let’s nationalize health care then. I know some doctors who can barely afford their green fees these days. I’m sure they’ll prosper under socialized medicine! Just ask them.

And don’t forget the oil execs! Maxine Waters wants to rescue those poor impoverished petro-barons from their plight as well.

Flashback: Nancy Pelosi re-organized the House cafeterias to serve shade-grown tofu and free-trade arugula and hippie food. The right wing blogosphere gave her a lot of crap for it at the time, but in retrospect it looks like a shrewd bit of marketing. With the Democrats in the majority, they needed to feed their new crop of runty meat-is-murder vegan-sushi Capitol staffers that the Dems were bringing in. According to the WaPo article above, the Senate staffers are foraging over on the House side.

When the GOP gets their act together and takes over again, it’ll be all-you-can-eat prime rib, with Freedom Fries and deep-fried chili cheese logs on the side. And Blue Bell ice cream for dessert.

___________

{Post by See-Dubya. Hat tip to my mom.}

My friends at NumbersUSA have sent out a warning that Sen. Dianne Feinstein may attempt to sneak an illegal alien amnesty measure into the Iraq supplemental war spending bill. (Yes, the same bill the White House is trying to stuff the Merida Initiative into, too.)

More info:

Our NumbersUSA Capitol Hill Team got several confirmations through both Democratic and Republican sources that Sen. Feinstein (D-Calif.) was preparing to add an [agricultural] amnesty to the Iraq bill Thursday afternoon in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

We don’t know the details of the amnesty. There is some chance she may try to slip it through by not including permanent legalization but just giving one or two million illegal ag workers a 5-year amnesty that allows them to work and live here while further sinking roots. The open-borders champions hope that the longer illegal aliens stay the more difficult it will ever be to deny them U.S. citizenship.

We need phone calls into the offices of members of the Senate Appropriations Committee — massively and immediately!

202-224-3121

If you live in the state of one of these Senators, please make a phone call immediately.

If you don’t have a Senator on the Committee, you may want to call a Senator in another state with which you have some attachment. We particularly need extra phone calls to Senators from small-population states.

Here are the Appropriations Senators who need your call:

Alexander (R-Tenn.)
Allard (R-Colo.)
Byrd (D-West Va.)
Bennett (R-Utah)
Bond (R-Mo.)
Brownback (R-Kan.)
Cochran (R-Miss.)
Craig (R-Idaho)
Domenici (R-N.M.)
Dorgan (D-N.D.)
Durbin (D-Ill.)
Feinstein (D-Calif.)
Gregg (R-N.H.)
Harkin (D-Iowa)
Hutchison (R-Texas)
Inouye (D-Hawaii)
Johnson (D-S.D.)
Kohl (D-Wis.)
Landrieu (D-La.)
Lautenberg (D-N.J.)
Leahy (D-Vt.)
McConnell (R-Ky.)
Mikulski (D-Md.)
Murray (D-Wash)
Nelson (D-Neb.)
Reed (D-R.I.)
Shelby (R-Ala.)
Specter (R-Pa.)
Stevens (R-Alaska)

…North Carolina growers, for example, have set up a North Carolina Growers Association that meets all of the ag labor needs through local workers and through legal foreign workers brought through the H-2A visa which ensures that the guest workers go home. Why shouldn’t California growers play by the same rules as law-abiding farmers in other states?

Based on past experience, there is a good chance that Feinstein will decide not to introduce her amnesty Thursday afternoon if she feels there is a major move against it. That’s what we want. Please let every member of the committee know just how worked up citizens get as soon as they hear of a possibility of an amnesty.

When it comes to the illegal alien amnesty zombie, eternal vigilance is required.

***
Update: The Feinstein amendment–co-sponsored with the cretinous GOP Sen. Larry Craig– passed the Senate Appropriations Cmte, 17-12.

Sen. Byrd, who opposed the shamnesty bill last spring, spoke in opposition to the amendment. You know what they say about broken clocks. Good for him.

Hill coverage here.

And another amnesty effort underway…Bill Campenni has the scoop.

Update 5/16: More details from Roy Beck:

Because the House of Representatives unexpectedly delayed the Iraq supplemental spending bill late Thursday, the full Senate won’t be allowed today to vote on the amnesty bill that the Senate Appropriations Committee unexpectedly took up and approved Thursday.

It now looks like the full Senate won’t be allowed to vote on the amnesty for around 1.3 million illegal alien ag workers (plus their families) until next Wednesday.

That gives us some time to beat this atrocity…

…
Rosemary Jenks (our Vice President, Government Relations) just called me after finishing reading the Iraq supplemental spending bill as it came out of committee. It would:

# Grant a three-year work visa followed by a permanent greencard to all illegal aliens who have been working as shepherds, goat herders and dairy herders.

# Grant a five-year work visa to the estimated 1.3 million illegal aliens working in other agricultural jobs — plus all of their families. There is no instruction on what happens after the five years.

# Grant a tripling of the maximum number of H-2B visas for lower skill, non-agricultural seasonal workers.

# Grant industries an extra 218,000 additional permanent green cards for skilled foreign workers.

Friends, perhaps you are thinking what I’m thinking: Don’t these Senators know that we are in an economic recession, or close to it? Don’t they know that unemployment rates have been going up and that industries across the country are shedding both skilled and unskilled jobs?

If ever you doubted that U.S. Senators live lives disconnected from ordinary Americans, you could see it Thursday as 17 of them fell all over themselves to drastically increase the number of foreign workers allowed to hold U.S. jobs!

RIDICULOUS CLAIMS ABOUT RUNNING OUT OF FOOD WITHOUT AN AMNESTY

Senators Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) led the way to protect our economy from having to figure out ways to hire some of the 14 million-plus American workers who are trying to find a job but can’t.

Especially interesting is their claim that we will fail to harvest crops and feed the world this year without an amnesty for illegal aliens. They made the same claim in each of the last four years. Each time that we beat back the amnesty, the harvests still happened! How many times does Feinstein have to cry wolf (or rotting crops) before people stop paying attention?

Of course, the outlaw businesses that scream for illegal aliens do have more to fear this year because various enforcement policies (federal, state and local) are beginning to drive more and more illegal aliens home.

What we have to constantly remind everybody, though, is that each of these outlaw growers at any time can come clean, go straight and become a legal, patriotic member of the business community by importing any needed foreign ag workers through the H-2A temporary worker program. There is no limit on how many they can import as long as they pay them decently and ensure that they go home.

The North Carolina Growers Association has used the H-2A visa program for years and opposes all efforts at amnesty for illegal alien ag workers. If the program works fine for North Carolina farmers, why do farmers in other part of the country insist that only illegal aliens will fit the bill?

Monkeys performed about as well as college students at mental addition, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a finding that suggests nonverbal math skills are not unique to humans.

The research from Duke University follows the finding by Japanese researchers earlier this month that young chimpanzees performed better than human adults at a memory game…

…”This is the first study that looked at whether or not they could make explicit decisions that were based on mathematical types of calculations,” said Jessica Cantlon, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at Duke, whose work appeared in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology (www.plosbiology.org).

“It shows when you take language away from a human, they end up looking just like monkeys in terms of their performance,” Cantlon said in a telephone interview.

Her study pitted the monkey math team of Boxer and Feinstein — two female macaque monkeys named for U.S. senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California — with 14 Duke University students.

“We had them do math on the fly,” Cantlon said.

Their compensation?

As for the teams, both were paid. Boxer and Feinstein got their favorite reward: a sip of Kool-Aid soft drink.

***

Commenter wrcnossen writes: “And you should see how the rats ‘Pelosi and Reid’ perform.”

Ha.

Here’s the video they posted of the raucous state Dem executive meeting over the weekend:

California Dem party bigwig Bob Mulholland lambasted the MoveOn acolytes as “worse than Bush.” And more:

Mulholland blasted the bloggers and activists supporting the censure resolution as “fringe” and “pre-nursing home”.

“The Democratic party’s purpose is to remind armchair activists that the duty is to elect a Democrat to the White House so we can end the Iraq mess”, he said. “Nothing should get in the way of that.”

Ooh, the nutroots don’t like that “pre-nursing home” insult. Whatever it means.

Let’s hope they keep at each other’s throats. If they’re preoccupied tearing themselves apart, that’s less time and energy they’ll have to hike your taxes, expand government, and undermine our security. Every bit helps.

Well, well, well. Remember left-wing, sleazebag loon Jim McDermott, the Democrats’ favorite hypocritical wire-tapper? There’s breaking news on his decade-old case (hat tip: William A.):

Rep. Jim McDermott had no right to disclose the contents of an illegally taped telephone call involving House Republican leaders a decade ago, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

In a 5-4 opinion, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that McDermott, a Washington Democrat, should not have given reporters access to the taped telephone call.

McDermott’s offense was especially egregious since he was a senior member of the House ethics committee, the court said.

When he became a member of the ethics panel, McDermott “voluntarily accepted a duty of confidentiality that covered his receipt and handling of the … illegal recording. He therefore had no First Amendment right to disclose the tape to the media,” Judge A. Raymond Randolph wrote on behalf of the court. Four judges agreed with him.

The ruling upholds a previous decision ordering McDermott to pay House Minority Leader John Boehner (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, more than $700,000 for leaking the taped conversation. The figure includes $60,000 in damages and more than $600,000 in legal costs.

Boehner was among several GOP leaders heard on the December 1996 call, which involved ethics allegations against then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. Gingrich, who was heard on the call telling Boehner and others how to react to allegations, was later fined $300,000 and reprimanded by the House.

McDermott leaked the tape to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times, which published stories on the case in January 1997.

How’s that house-cleaning coming along, Nancy?

***

Eugene Volokh has more on the Boehner/McDermott case, via Instapundit.

***

Meanwhile, David Keene follows up on the Feinstein Milcon story in The Hill:

…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.”

***
Previous McDermott coverage:

Dirty Democrat Files: Jim McDermott found guilty of ethics violations
Jim McDermott: Lawbreaker
Eavesdropping for me, but not for thee
Tales of the tapes

Previous DiFi coverage:

The Feinstein Chronicles: Old media/new media catfight
DiFi and the San Francisco Chronicle
A question for Dianne Feinstein
DiFi and the culture of corruption
Dianne Feinstein’s ethics

Still waiting for Dianne Feinstein’s hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, to cover her reported resignation from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. Basic questions to be asked and answered: Did she or didn’t she? And if she did, was it because of the reported ethical cloud over her head or not?

Last week, I shared a reader’s e-mail exchange with the paper’s reader representative promising independent investigative reporting from San Fran’s paper of record.

Another reader sent a separate e-mail exchange he had with the paper’s website news director. It reveals a fascinating blue-on-blue spat between the Bay Area old media and new media.

In one corner, you have the establishment, left-wing Chronicle–longtime cheerleader and endorser of Dianne Feinstein.

In the other corner, you have Peter Byrne–left-left-wing, anti-war, anti-establishment investigative journalist funded by The Nation Institute and longtime thorn in the Feinstein/Blum partnership’s side.

With that context in mind, here’s the e-mail exchange. Note the sneering, threatened tone of the SFgate.com editor:

—–Original Message—–
From: Joe
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 5:18 PM
To: vk@sfgate.com
Subject: Did Diane Feinstein Resign from her Committee?

Dear SF Chronicle,

I have been watching your paper. There have been rumors on the internet that Diane Feinstein has resigned from her Defense Committee over conflicts of interest.

Have you any idea if this is true or false? If it is true, should you report it? Are you interested in news like this?

It would be shocking if a little internet page had a story several days before you figure it out. Maybe it wouldn’t… maybe you are hoping no one will figure it out.

Sorry, the genie is out of the bottle. You have lost your ability to censor news. I will show my classes the internet story and then your story when it breaks. It is fun to show the kids about credibility.

Catch a clue!

Joe S.

***

From: “Vlae Kershner”
To: Joe S.
Subject: RE: Did Diane Feinstein Resign from her Committee?
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 17:24:36 -0700

Thanks for writing. Our Washington bureau says it is not true. You should show the report to your class as an example of how special interests can disseminate phony news on the Internet.

– Vlae Kershner, news director, SFGate.com

***

A little later, Kershner amended her his sneering:

From: “Vlae Kershner”
To: Joe S.
Subject: RE: Did Diane Feinstein Resign from her Committee?
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:26:29 -0700

just to clarify my prior message, I’m told that what happened was that when the Democrats won control in January, she got off the Military Construction subcommittee to take the chair of Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior instead.

—–End Messages—–

Yes, but why? Why would she give up her powerful position on MILCON–after years as ranking member in the minority and subordinate to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison–to take the less prestigious position? As she said herself while serving in the minority a few years ago: “With so many military and veterans’ facilities in my home state, I will be working to ensure that California has the resources to fund the projects it needs.”

Why would California need her less now in that position as chair than when she was in the minority?

CNS reports it tried to get a statement from Feinstein on Friday with no luck.

I also followed up and called Feinstein’s office today for a statement. The press office says it will get back to me.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see just what exactly the San Francisco Chronicle determines was “phony” about Byrne’s reporting and whether the paper’s editorial board will also turn up its nose at Feinstein’s reported conflicts of interest–which, as we all know, would be a non-stop, front-page crusade if Feinstein were a Republican…

***

Where’s the rest of the MSM? The liberal blogs?

Howie Kurtz, the NYTimes, the LA Times, anybody: How about a profile of Peter Byrne? Who is this guy? Shouldn’t he be an example of the kind of investigative citizen journalism the MSM prefers over opinion blogging? How much funding has The Nation provided him? What is driving him? Is his muck-raking more right than wrong, or what? What does he think of the Chronicle’s derision? Or the strange bedfellows he is making with conservative bloggers/websites publicizing his work?

There are good stories waiting to be covered here.

Hello?

***

Jason Smith had an e-mail exchange with Kershner, too:

From: Jason Smith
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 1:00 PM
To: vk@sfgate.com
Subject: Dianne Feinstein coverage
Importance: High

Ms. Kershner,

I’m curious whether you see a potential story in the fact that Senator Dianne Feinstein, while sitting on the MILCON committee, approved billions of dollars in awards to contractors owned by her husband? Have you assigned this story to one of your investigative reporters? Have you received any comments from Feinstein’s camp? Do you find it ironic that Feinstein remains on the Senate Ethics Committee despite this apparent conflict of interest on her part?

Basically, I’m just curious whether your paper sees a story here at all. I’m sure if this had been a Republican involved, your paper would’ve done much more investigation on much less evidence. How do you defend the appearance of bias?

Jason Smith
TexasRainmaker.com

Her His chastened response:

From: Vlae Kershner
To: Jason Smith
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 3:04 PM
Subject: RE: Dianne Feinstein coverage

I’m just the editor of the website — we don’t have any online-only reporters. Maybe you should redirect that question to Dick Rogers, the Chronicle’s reader representative, at readerrep@sfchronicle.com

Jason writes: “Somehow, I just picture the hands flying in the air as if to say, ‘whoa, I’m not involved, I’m innocent I tell ya!’”

***
Previous:

DiFi and the San Francisco Chronicle
A question for Dianne Feinstein
DiFi and the culture of corruption
Dianne Feinstein’s ethics

A reader sends her e-mail exchange with the still AWOL San Francisco Chronicle:

From: Erika
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 4:41 PM
To: SFReaderRep
Subject: Dianne Feinstein

Do you plan on reporting about Dianne Feinstein’s resignation of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee? She is a SF gal, after all??

Erika

***

From: Rogers, Dick (mailto:DRogers@sfchronicle.com) On Behalf Of SFReaderRep
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 9:18 AM
To: Erika
Subject: RE: Dianne Feinstein

I asked the managing editor to check it out. I read the story in the Metro papers but had many basic questions. The Chron will have to do independent reporting, which I expect it will do.

Dick

***
Previous:

A question for Dianne Feinstein
DiFi and the culture of corruption
Dianne Feinstein’s ethics

Will she also be resigning from the Senate Rules Committee?

Is DiFi dirty? In January, I linked to Metroactive’s extensive investigation of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s conflict of interests as a member of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee who voted for appropriations worth billions to her husband’s firms.

Looks like Metroactive’s work may have had an effect. They report on Feinstein’s resignation from the subcommittee yesterday:

SEN. Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum’s ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.

As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer design. She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world to inspect construction projects, some of which were contracted to her husband’s companies, Perini Corp. and URS Corp.

Perhaps she resigned from MILCON because she could not take the heat generated by Metro’s expose of her ethics (which was partially funded by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute). Or was her work on the subcommittee finished because Blum divested ownership of his military construction and advanced weapons manufacturing firms in late 2005?

The MILCON subcommittee is not only in charge of supervising military construction, it also oversees “quality of life” issues for veterans, which includes building housing for military families and operating hospitals and clinics for wounded soldiers. Perhaps Feinstein is trying to disassociate herself from MILCON’s incredible failure to provide decent medical care for wounded soldiers.

The NYTimes is demanding an investigation. Arianna Huffington has launched ads lambasting Feinstein. The left-wing blogosphere is an uproar over Feinstein’s war profiteering.

Kidding.

***

Am I missing something? Because I surfed over to the San Francisco Chronicle website, and as of 10:55am Eastern, I see nothing about Feinstein’s resigation.

Check out Memeorandum. Blogger reax is, yes, mostly from the right.

Feinstein vexed by Roberts’ humor, views on abortion rights

That’s right. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has elected herself chief of the Democrat’s anti-humor police. Via AP:

In his years as a White House lawyer, John Roberts was quick with a joke. But now, as a Supreme Court nominee, he might have to explain the punch lines.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Wednesday that Roberts could be called to account for some of his humor from his years in the Reagan administration, when he frequently leavened his legal opinions with bursts of wit that could run from playful to caustic.

Feinstein, the only woman on the Judiciary Committee, pointed to one memo in which Roberts, while disparaging state efforts to combat discrimination against women, wondered whether “encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good.”

“He … had a sense of humor that is subject to interpretation, on women’s rights for example,” Feinstein told reporters after a speech at a downtown hotel.

“Whether that was a joke, or whether it represents his real view, I don’t know. We’ll try and find out,” she said.

Next task for the Senate Democratic leadership: Investigating the hidden link between jocular Judge Roberts, the dangerous funnymen behind the Federalist Society, and the insidious humor writer who penned the most famous anti-feminist joke in American history:

Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: That’s not funny!

Go get ‘em, DiFi. The Republic is counting on you.