Senator Dianne Feinstein Got a Taste of Her Spying Prescription for the Rest of America — and She Doesn’t Like It — Funny How that Works with Power-Hungry Narcissists and Vegetatively-Dead Legislators

© 2014 Peter Free

 

12 March 2014

 

 

The CIA has allegedly been spying on Congress, and Senator Dianne Feinstein — who supports the NSA’s profligately indiscriminate domestic spying in violation of the Fourth Amendment — is upset

 

Ma’am, we bleed for your exaltedness:

 

 

California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, has been an ally of Obama and a staunch defender of the administration during the controversy over the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

 

So her credibility could not be questioned when she went public, reluctantly, to accuse Obama’s CIA of illegal and unconstitutional actions: violating the separation of powers by searching the committee’s computers and intimidating congressional staffers with bogus legal threats.

 

All of this was allegedly being done to keep quiet information about the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs during the George W. Bush administration.

 

Feinstein said that the CIA’s actions may have violated the Constitution’s speech-and-debate clause and the Fourth Amendment, not to mention criminal law and the ban on domestic spying by the CIA.

 

© 2014 Dana Milbank, Allegations of CIA spying on the Senate deserve investigation, Washington Post (11 March 2014) (paragraphs split)

 

 

“Lemme get this straight, Pete . . .”

 

According to California’s most famous Senator:

 

 

(i) it is okay for the Executive Branch to spy on citizens’ communications,

 

(ii) via airy permissions obtained from a kangaroo FISA Court,

 

and

 

(iii) it is equally acceptable to shut those same citizens up — with a National Security Letter that prohibits them from telling anyone else that the NSA has solicited the information they allegedly hold (for other people) —

 

BUT

 

(iv) it is NOT okay to spy on members of Congress?

 

All this presumably so because we all know how selflessly that group of self-interested monkey-copulators look after America’s interests 24 hours a day.

 

 

Senator Feinstein claims that the Separation of Powers doctrine has been shattered by the CIA’s allegedly malevolent act

 

Apparently in the Senator’s mind, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments have no remaining modern application — hence her repeated approval and support for the NSA’s wide-ranging domestic snooping — but the Separation of Powers Doctrine still does.

 

This so, despite the blatantly evident fact that her President and her Congress have done their best to destroy the Doctrine themselves, by ceding excessive and intrusive power to the Executive Branch.  See, for example, here.

 

I imagine that the Senator’s feelings are hurt that anyone could possibly think that she and her Democratic cronies had participated in:

 

 

(a) the Powers Give-Away that gained momentum under post-9/11 Republicans, during the King Bush II Administration

 

and

 

(b) rose to crescendo volume under a Democratic administration, during the reign of King Obama the First.

 

Who, me?  Let’s blame the CIA instead.

 

 

The moral? — It’s always okay, until it happens to you

 

This incident would be amusing, were it not for the hypocritical, nation-destroying stupidity that underlies it.