Thursday, January 08, 2009

 

Sanjay Gupta? Seriously Mr. President? Sanjay Fucking Gupta?

OBAMA'S LATEST DUMB PICK: TV DOC SANJAY GUPTA

by Michael Giltz at HuffPo

Apparently, Marcus Welby is too old and Noah Wylie of ER wants a break because Barack Obama's pick for Surgeon General is CNN"s Sanjay Gupta. This is dismaying since Gupta has embraced junk science, has questionable ethics and seems to have been chosen mostly because he is famous. Forget a Team of Rivals: this is the latest example of Obama's Team of Celebrities.

First, Gupta. I don't watch him regularly but I assume (and hope) most of his medical commentary falls well within standard norms. But I was aghast when I heard him talk about cell phones and say he was too afraid to use one without an ear piece. Surely the Surgeon General should take a strong stand against junk science and unreasonable fears. The argument by Gupta and others when it comes to cell phones is sure, there's absolutely no sound scientific evidence they can be damaging and of course believing they can cause cancer goes against everything we know about non-iodizing radiation, but still...you never know. By this logic, there's no reason to be afraid of your TV set but why not watch your favorite shows from behind the couch, just to be safe? Unless you're also afraid of the AM/FM radio signals that bombard you every day, afraid of grocery store item scanners, afraid of the signals that zap you every time you walk in and out of a store so they can check for security devices, there is no sound scientific medical reason to be afraid of your cell phone. If you want to be on the safe side, you should also wear aluminum foil on your head, "just in case."

Gupta also came out on the losing end in my opinion when trying to attack Michael Moore's documentary Sicko. His initial report on the film and subsequent debate with Moore led to CNN having to issue corrections fixing Gupta's errors. They never spotlighted a single factual error by Moore but simply took issue with how Moore cherrypicked the data he cited. Here is CNN's description of their back-and-forth on the facts.

But I'm far more concerned about Gupta's questionable ethics. According to the New York Times, Gupta accepts paid speaking engagements, something no journalist worth their salt would do -- and a practice banned by most media outlets. Why CNN allows this of one of their reporters is a mystery to me, but it means Gupta's conflicts of interest probably stretch from here to Kalamazoo. You can't call yourself a journalist and take money from people you're supposedly reporting on.

Finally, I'm most concerned because the only valid reason I can think of for Obama choosing Gupta is that he's on TV. Certainly, Obama needs someone to challenge him on medical issues: Obama's medical disclosure was shamefully inadequate during the election. (Basically, he offered up a note from his doctor insisting that Obama was fine.) Let's hope that's not a pattern, just like the selection of Gupta seems a pattern. Bush wallowed in cronyism. I hoped Obama would embrace competence. But that's hardly been the case.

Why was Bill Richardson picked for Secretary of Commerce? Given the state of our economy, I would expect Obama to pick someone who lived and breathed commerce and was bursting with smart, progressive ideas about how to stimulate the economy and get us back on track. Instead, by their own admission, Richardson's biggest asset seems to have been his high profile and his Hispanic roots. (Aren't two Hispanics in the Cabinet enough of a show of respect?) Certainly, commerce has not been the laser-like focus of Richardson over the years.

Why was Leon Panetta picked as head of the CIA? (And what possible reason could there be for keeping Diane Feinstein out of the loop on it?) Panetta has zero intelligence experience and even his own supporters agree he'll need to have a staff of advisers who are well-grounded in the intelligence community. Gee, you think? I'd like to imagine that ALL the top people at the CIA had a strong background in intelligence. Panetta's main qualification seems to have been that he's well-known, a celebrity in political circles. Rather breathtakingly, Obama's people insist that one of Panetta's qualifications is that he received intelligence briefings from the CIA when he was the White House Chief of Staff. In other words, because he received briefings from the CIA, he's now qualified to run the CIA. I often read Supreme Court rulings. I guess that means I'm ready to be the Chief Justice. (Editor's Note: The Punisher likes the Panetta pick. CIA Director's are always criticized. Panetta has been consistent on issues like Waterboarding, Rendition etc. so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.)

And how about the hate-mongerer Rick Warren? Did Obama choose to honor a person of faith at his inauguration that reflected his own personal values, someone that celebrated the diversity of this country and showed a respect for people of other faiths and even people of no faith? No, he chose Warren, a man who actively attacks the beliefs of most Americans, spreads hate about gays by comparing them to pedophiles and incest, lies about it, also lied about Prop 8 by insisting he would be thrown in jail if it didn't pass and on and on. So why did Obama choose him? Because Warren is a celebrity. He's famous. Lots of people know him. And even if Warren's beliefs are antithetical to those of most Americans and certainly most of Obama's actual supporters, fame outstrips everything else.

Maybe Sanjay Gupta will prove an effective Surgeon General, if he accepts. He's certainly an effective communicator, a smart man, and an Emmy-winning, best-selling author and celebrity. But first he'll need to clean up his questionable ethics, junk the junk science and embrace the scientific and medical community.

What do you think of Gupta as Surgeon General? Any other Obama picks you're disappointed in?

UPDATE: The New York Times blogs about the debate over Gupta, with links to articles and comments that mention Gupta has also waffled on issues like vaccines and autism, opposes medical marijuana, is considered by many on the left to be in the pocket of big pharma, opposes universal health care, played up the risks of Avian flu in the US to scare up ratings, and other cases where he might be cowtowing to irrational fears or entrenched interests rather than siding with the scientific community.


Wednesday, January 07, 2009

 

Harry Reid... Pathetic and Incompetant. It's Time For Senate Dems to Say Goodbye To Harry.

I WANT TO PLAY POKER WITH HARRY REID

by Jane Hamsher at HuffPo

I want to play poker with Harry Reid. Really I do.

Rather than call for a special election in Illinois to fill Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat, Reid sends a letter to Rod Blagojevich signed by everyone in the Democratic caucus asking him to step down. They assert that they will not seat anyone he appoints.

Harumph.

Blago wipes his ass with it and appoints Burris anyway.

Burris holds a press conference and announces he will be in D.C. on Tuesday to be sworn in with the rest of the Senate. Bobby Rush plays the race card. Reid does not see the handwriting on the wall.

He counters by calling Secretary of State Jesse White, who has already said he won't sign Burris's certification, and encourages him. What White is doing is most certainly outside his legal authority -- the Secretary of State doesn't have veto power. But Reid not only gives White a high five, he tells him they'll use this to keep Burris from being seated.

Then he smugly chortles about how he'll manipulate Senate procedure and punt to the Rules Committee, and assures everyone that they will drag things out for months if necessary until Blago is impeached and his successor appoints someone else. And he does it in the press.

Upon reading this, Cornyn announces that Franken won't have a signed certification either, and the GOP will use it to keep him from being seated,

Reuters: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid yielded to Republican threats and agreed on Monday not to immediately seat fellow Democrat Al Franken."

Blago laughs out loud. This is amateur night in Dixieland. He leaks to the press that he spoke with Reid before the election, and that Reid didn't think any of the African American candidates vying for the seat were "electable," while Tammy Duckworth was. He stirs up the potential jury pool and makes Reid look like an idiot -- the day before Reid is set to appear on Meet the Press.

Reid looks like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs on Meet the Press. Nobody knows how much Fitz has (not even Fitz, who is still trying to transcribe his tapes) or how much he'll need to reveal to prove his case, so Reid says he "doesn't remember" his conversation with Blago, but calls Blago a liar anyway. When asked if he supported Jesse Jackson Jr. for the Senate seat, he says he would support him. And admits that there's "room to negotiate" on Burris.

Burris appears at the Senate on Tuesday. Gets turned away. Could Reid look any worse?

Yes!

Obama stares down DiFi, appoints Panetta to the CIA, and the NYT breaks the story before she's told (but Ron Wyden already knows). DiFi's fuming.

Despite having been one of the 50 Senators who signed Reid's letter saying Burris would never be seated, she announces that as the outgoing head of the Rules Committee she thinks the Senate has no choice but to seat him.

(Good timing, because Charlie Rangel is already complaining about the Rules Committee dragging its feet.)

Reid can't hold his own caucus in line. Blames Rahm. Gives interview saying "I don't work for Barack Obama."

Smooth.

WaPo: "Burris Backs Reid Into a Corner."

A seventy-one year old dude who hasn't held office for 14 years, appointed by a crook, takes the Senate Majority Leader to the cleaners.

Reid is a red state senator, up for re-election in 2010 and under pressure from the right, who is already making noise about appeasing Republicans who aren't going to be appeased. He's a hazard to Obama's agenda, which is why leading Senate Democrats tried to ease him out as Majority Leader last year.

See: Daschle, Tom.

Burris will be seated. He's not gonna deal.

Why should he?

He's playing poker with Harry Reid.

Jane Hamsher blogs at firedoglake.com

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It's Tim for Harry Reid to Go. Now he's gonna stand up to.... Obama? He never stood up to Bush. What the Fuck? Reid should retire.

In an interview with The Hill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would not roll over for the new president the way Republicans did for Bush.

Reid stated, "I don't believe in the executive power trumping everything... I believe in our Constitution, three separate but equal branches of government."


"If Obama steps over the bounds, I will tell him. ... I do not work for Barack Obama. I work with him," he said.

The Nevada Democrat gave a similar quote to Politico. "I like Barack Obama very much. He won a classic election, never have we had a better one," Reid said. "But I don't work for him, I work with him."

Reid went on to criticize Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) for bucking the party on seating Senate appointee Roland Burris. Feinstein argued that not seating Burris would threaten all gubernatorial appointments. "That's not valid, her statement," he said. "I told her that. OK?"

Reid also said that he planned to lead the Senate Democrats until at least 2015. However, he downplayed his own importance as Majority Leader. "I understand how close I've come to failure a number of times. I've done OK," Reid said. "I've never considered myself Johnny Unitas or anything like that. I am just someone the [Democratic] Caucus has selected and they feel comfortable with."


Tuesday, January 06, 2009

 

John Yoo and John Bolton, Together Again

by Hunter

Some things defy all attempts at satire. It is not that it is difficult to satirize them, but that they are immune. Like black holes, they pull all humor near them to a certain event horizon and then beyond, where it is torn to shreds, never to be seen again.

Such an event might be, oh, let's say... the great Bush administration legal and foreign policy minds, John Yoo and John Bolton, penning an opinion piece in the New York Times warning that a sneaky, malevolent Obama might seek to overreach his presidential powers:

The Constitution’s Treaty Clause has long been seen, rightly, as a bulwark against presidential inclinations to lock the United States into unwise foreign commitments. The clause will likely be tested by Barack Obama’s administration, as the new president and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, led by the legal academics in whose circles they have long traveled, contemplate binding down American power and interests in a dense web of treaties and international bureaucracies.

And so on. I am absolutely certain that seeing the foreign policy stylings of Bolton and Yoo objecting to unencumbered presidential power is goddamn comedy gold of the highest caliber, but therein lies the problem. It has passed the event horizon: there is no accurate way to describe its level of self-satire. Would it be like a vampire owning a blood bank, or a chicken owning a poultry processing plant? Is it larger than a breadbox? If you light a match to it, does it smell like a cinnamon-sprinkled tire fire?

And what level of Dante's hell might it be in which lost souls are given nothing to read but joint Bolton/Yoo policy pronouncements? I am sure it would be down there somewhere, somewhere near the adulterers but not quite past the cheapskates.


Let me attempt to describe this. Suppose a dozen clowns die in a circus fire. Not funny. Now, if a dozen clowns burst into flames while attempting in unison to program their VCR: funnier. Now suppose a dozen clowns beat each other to death with whole, unfrozen bluefin tuna: goddamn hilarious. (Let it be said, for the record, that I am indifferent to clowns, except that I have it on good authority that circus clowns have no souls.) Watching the legal wranglers of torture, "preemptive" military action and Unitary Executive-ism pen an ode to the proper encumbrance of executive power? It is at least clown-and-tuna funny.

Now, one could ponder, if one were so inclined, exactly what parallel dimension we have entered in which Satan's own personal attorney, John Freaking Yoo, Bush administration apologist and go-to legal word-wrangler for seemingly every vicious, Constitution-dismissing, Geneva-convention-violating abomination that the administration could come up with for eight treaty-shredding, conscience-shocking years, suddenly comes to a point of epiphany and declares that Presidential power must now be studiously circumscribed. The answer, however, is so obvious as to defy even humor: he cares because now a Democrat will be president, and the outcome might be less to his liking.

One could similarly ponder, if one were into mental self-mutilation of the most crass nature, what would cause Satan's own foreign policy ambassador, John Bolton, a diplomat whose entire schtick is his complete lack of and distain for anything even resembling diplomacy, a man whose very presence can send shivers down the spine of even our most trusted and supposedly valued international allies, why he suddenly gives a flying, U.N.-burning damn about the Senate's long-abused, long-ignored treaty powers. The answer? Because he is concerned a president might actually be tempted to sign one.


Of course, Bolton and Yoo have been goaded into objecting to Obama's purely hypothetical presidential powers because of their impeccably wingnutty fear of, as they coin it, "global governance" -- the premise that the Obama administration will threaten American "sovereignity and autonomy" through such dastardly actions as working with other nations on climate change, or bending to the terrors of environmentalism, or (most keenly felt, perhaps) recognizing the International Criminal Court, leading us into a bleak future where we may be bound by the same laws and conventions that we expect other nations to adhere to.

So fear not: it is not that these two arch-conservatives have abandoned every premise held during their years of political service and punditry merely on some base whim. They have abandoned avery premise held during their years of political service and punditry because now it is to the momentary advantage of their particular brand of hypersensitive neoconservative new-world-order environmentalists-are-scary paranoia to do so. Al Qaeda, two wars, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and an ongoing presidentially-backed domestic espionage effort could not shake their belief in unitary executive power, but talking about potentially lowering carbon emissions is a bridge too far. For that, these grand and noble hucksters of the Bush administration are willing to alter their foundational beliefs.

And to any even moderately aware observer, the only surprising thing is that they managed to make it all the way to January before doing it.


 

Dianne Feinstein New Senate Committee Chair on Intelligence doesn't like Leon Panetta as CIA Director. Panetta must be a good choice.

Leon Panetta: CIA Director

News networks are reporting that Leon Panetta, former congressman and White House chief of staff, will be President-elect Barack Obama's CIA Director.

The New York Times adds some background:

Mr. Panetta has a reputation in Washington as a competent manager with strong background in budget issues, but has little hands-on intelligence experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he will take control of the agency most directly responsible for hunting senior Al Qaeda leaders around the globe, but one that has been buffeted since the Sept. 11 attacks by leadership changes and morale problems. [...]


Given his background, Mr. Panetta is a somewhat unusual choice to lead the C.I.A., an agency that has been unwelcoming to previous directors perceived as outsiders, such as Stansfield M. Turner and John M. Deutch. But his selection points up the difficulty Mr. Obama had in finding a C.I.A. director with no connection to controversial counterterrorism programs of the Bush era.

The move came as a surprise, however, including to incoming Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who is clearly not pleased. She gave the following statement to the Washington Independent:

"I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director. I know nothing about this, other than what I've read," said Senator Feinstein, who will chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the 111th Congress.


"My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time."

An aide to outgoing intel committee chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller echoed Feinstein: he "has tremendous respect for Leon Panetta [but] he believes the CIA director should go to someone who has significant intelligence experience and someone from outside the political world of Washington D.C."

David Corn at Mother Jones, however, says the pick is reason to celebrate:

Panetta is an even-tempered and highly regarded Washington player--kind of a Mr. Fixit in a nice suit. He is also a zero-tolerance critic of the use of torture, and he considers waterboarding--a tactic used by the CIA--to be torture.


A CIA director who has denounced torture, advocated intelligence cuts, and backed greater congressional control of covert operations--that would be....different. This appointment certainly has the potential to spark opposition from inside and outside the agency. But if Panetta manages to make it to Langley without much fuss, that would indeed signal real change in Washington.

News networks are reporting that Leon Panetta, former congressman and White House chief of staff, will be President-elect Barack Obama's CIA Director.

The New York Times adds some background:

Mr. Panetta has a reputation in Washington as a competent manager with strong background in budget issues, but has little hands-on intelligence experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he will take control of the agency most directly responsible for hunting senior Al Qaeda leaders around the globe, but one that has been buffeted since the Sept. 11 attacks by leadership changes and morale problems. [...]


Given his background, Mr. Panetta is a somewhat unusual choice to lead the C.I.A., an agency that has been unwelcoming to previous directors perceived as outsiders, such as Stansfield M. Turner and John M. Deutch. But his selection points up the difficulty Mr. Obama had in finding a C.I.A. director with no connection to controversial counterterrorism programs of the Bush era.

The move came as a surprise, however, including to incoming Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who is clearly not pleased. She gave the following statement to the Washington Independent:

"I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director. I know nothing about this, other than what I've read," said Senator Feinstein, who will chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the 111th Congress.


"My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time."

An aide to outgoing intel committee chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller echoed Feinstein: he "has tremendous respect for Leon Panetta [but] he believes the CIA director should go to someone who has significant intelligence experience and someone from outside the political world of Washington D.C."

David Corn at Mother Jones, however, says the pick is reason to celebrate:

Panetta is an even-tempered and highly regarded Washington player--kind of a Mr. Fixit in a nice suit. He is also a zero-tolerance critic of the use of torture, and he considers waterboarding--a tactic used by the CIA--to be torture.


A CIA director who has denounced torture, advocated intelligence cuts, and backed greater congressional control of covert operations--that would be....different. This appointment certainly has the potential to spark opposition from inside and outside the agency. But if Panetta manages to make it to Langley without much fuss, that would indeed signal real change in Washington.

Panetta spoke out against distortion of intelligence and use of torture in an editorial on "fear tactics" last March.

Fear exacts a terrible toll on our democracy. Five years ago, America went to war in Iraq over the false fear that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.


Even though we now know that there were intelligence officials who questioned the assertion, few leaders were willing to challenge this argument for war because they knew it might undermine public support for the president's decision to invade Iraq.

More recently, President Bush vetoed a law that would require the CIA and all the intelligence services to abide by the same rules on torture as contained in the U.S. Army Field Manual.

He also criticized Hillary Clinton's campaign last winter in a New York Observer interview, saying the wife of his former boss had underestimated Obama.

A biography of Panetta can be found on his own website.

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Democrats Reward Dianne Feinstein for being completely wrong by allowing her to lead the Senate Committee on Intelligence.

FEINSTEIN: BAD CHOICE FOR INTELLIGENCE

Stephen Zunes @ HuffPo

Ignoring the pleas of those calling for a more credible figure, Senate Democrats have instead chosen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to lead the Senate Committee on Intelligence. Feinstein was among those who falsely claimed in 2002 -- despite the lack of any apparent credible evidence -- that Saddam Hussein had somehow reconstituted Iraq's arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, as well as its nuclear weapons program.

She used this supposed threat to justify her vote in October 2002 to grant President George W. Bush the unprecedented authority to invade Iraq. Most congressional Democrats voted against the resolution. So it is particularly disturbing that Democrats would award the coveted Intelligence Committee chair to someone from the party's right-wing minority.

She took this extreme hawkish position out of her own predilection, not because of political pressure. Indeed, Senator Feinstein acknowledged at the time of her vote that calls and emails to her office were overwhelmingly opposed to her supporting Bush's war plans. She decided to ignore her constituents and vote in favor of the resolution anyway.

Background to the Vote

Public opinion polls in the fall of 2002 showed a majority of Americans would support a U.S. invasion of Iraq only if it posed a serious threat to the national security of the United States. Unfortunately for Senator Feinstein and others eager for the United States to conquer that oil-rich country, Iraq wasn't a threat to the United States. Though Iraq once had an arsenal of chemical weapons as well as an active chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons development program, these were all destroyed or otherwise eliminated by the mid-1990s, as were their missiles and other delivery systems. With strict sanctions prohibiting imports of requisite technologies and raw materials, and a lack of adequate internal capacity to produce them in Iraq, it was physically impossible for the Iraqis to have reconstituted its "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs).

Former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter had briefed Senator Feinstein before the 2002 vote, and presented evidence that Iraq had achieved at least qualitative disarmament and could in no way be a threat to U.S. national security. According to Ritter, "I had her look me in the eye and I asked her if she had seen any credible evidence contradicting my conclusions. She said she had not."

Similarly, I was among a number of scholars, arms control analysts, and other constituents who briefed her staff on how -- given the ongoing strict international sanctions imposed on that country and rigorous UN inspections through the end of 1998 -- there was no way for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to have reconstituted his biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs. Citing reports from the UN, reputable think tanks, and recognized arms control experts -- as well as articles from respected peer-reviewed academic journals -- we thought we had made a convincing case that Iraq was no longer a threat to the United States or its neighbors.

Despite all this, Senator Feinstein insisted that Iraq somehow remained a "consequential threat" to the national security of the United States and claimed that Iraq still possessed biological and chemical weapons. And, in an effort to defend Bush's call for a U.S. invasion, she tried to discredit the UN inspections regime that had successfully disarmed Iraq by falsely claiming that "arms inspections, alone, will not force disarmament."

Similarly, even though the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency had correctly noted in 1998 that Iraq's nuclear program had been completely eliminated, Feinstein also falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein "is engaged in developing nuclear weapons."

When asked about such exaggerated claims regarding Iraq's military prowess, she insisted that she was somehow "privy to information that those in California are not." However, despite repeated requests to her office to make public what she was supposedly privy to, the only information her office provided has been the White House's summary of a 2003 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Based on the testimony of a handful of disreputable Iraqi exiles, this NIE met with widespread derision at the time of its release for its clearly inaccurate and politicized content.

Feinstein's supporters insist that her false claims about Iraqi WMDs were an honest mistake. But Ritter and other critics argue that it wasn't just ignorance and stupidity that led Feinstein to make these false statements about Iraq's military capabilities. She may very well have lied about the WMDs in order to frighten the public into supporting a U.S. takeover of that oil-rich country. Whether out of deceit or unawareness, however, Feinstein is clearly not suited to chair the committee.

Consequences of the Vote

I was also among a number of scholars specializing in the Middle East who warned Senator Feinstein that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would likely spark a disastrous armed insurgency, sectarian violence, and an increase in anti-American extremism in the Middle East and beyond. Despite this awareness of the likely consequences, however, she insisted that the United States should invade Iraq anyway. Such a decision raises serious questions as to whether she has the ability to rationally assess the costs and benefits of national security policies, which someone chairing the Intelligence Committee presumably should possess.

If her real goal was to protect our country from Iraq's alleged "weapons of mass destruction," however, she would have presumably called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops once they invaded and occupied Iraq and discovered that there really weren't such weapons after all. It should have also been obvious that the longer U.S. troops stayed in that country, with its long tradition of resistance to foreign invaders, the more likely it would provoke a major armed insurgency and the rise of extremists groups. Despite this, Feinstein called on American troops to remain in Iraq for more than four years after the invasion. She voted to send hundreds of billions of dollars worth of taxpayers' money to support Bush's war effort even as California sank deeper and deeper into fiscal crisis.

During this occupation, U.S. authorities helped to rewrite the country's economic laws to allow American corporations to take over Iraqi industries and repatriate 100% of profits. Under U.S. tutelage, the new Iraqi government slashed corporate taxes and provided generous oil concessions to American conglomerates. In this way, the war has been extremely profitable for some giant corporations. Among these were the firms URS and Perini, both of which Feinstein's husband served as the majority owner. The Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, under her leadership, steered government contracts to these very companies.

The Democratic Party's decision to appoint as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee someone with such a history of dubious judgment on intelligence matters is hardly new. The party chose Jay Rockefeller (WV) -- who is leaving his post to chair the Commerce Committee -- to chair the Intelligence Committee in January 2007, although he also made false claims about Iraq's WMD programs similar to those of Feinstein in order to justify his vote in favor of the invasion.

In the world of Senate Democrats, therefore, it appears that the quickest path to leadership in Intelligence comes from getting things wrong.

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