Diane Feinstein,a prime defender of the Surveillance State, renews her assault on the 1st Amendment

[stockholmer]

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/02/dianne_feinstein_targets_press_freedom/

The supreme Senate defender of state secrecy and the Surveillance State, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, yesterday issued a statement to Australia’s largest newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, http://www.smh.com.au/national/us-senator-calls-to-prosecute-assange-20120701-21b3n.html demanding (once again) the prosecution of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. To see how hostile Feinstein is to basic press freedoms, permit me to change “Assange” each time it appears in her statement to “The New York Times“:

The head of the US Senate’s powerful intelligence oversight committee has renewed calls for (The New York Times) to be prosecuted for espionage. . . .

”I believe (The New York Times) has knowingly obtained and disseminated classified information which could cause injury to the United States,” the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Dianne Feinstein, said in a written statement provided to the Herald. ”(It) has caused serious harm to US national security, and should be prosecuted accordingly.”

As EFF’s Trevor Timm noted, there is no sense in which Feinstein’s denunciation applies to WikiLeaks but not to The New York Times (and, for that matter, senior Obama officials http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/us/politics/accidental-path-to-record-leak-cases-under-obama.html?pagewanted=all ). Indeed, unlike WikiLeaks, which has never done so, The New York Times has repeatedly published Top Secret information. That’s why the prosecution that Feinstein demands for WikiLeaks would be the gravest threat to press freedom and basic transparency in decades. Feinstein’s decades-long record in the Senate strongly suggest that she would perceive these severe threats to press freedom as a benefit rather than drawback to her prosecution designs.

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Given all of that, it looks like the Observer‘s British neocon warcheerleading columnist, Nick Cohen, picked a really bad week to write an entire column mocking concerns that the U.S. would seek to prosecute and extradite Assange as “paranoia.” Only wilful ignorance would lead someone to claim that such evidence is nonexistent. Indeed, the evidence has long been overwhelming that the U.S. is eager to prosecute him and is actively seeking to do so. That’s because it’s filled with people like Dianne Feinstein, whose supreme loyalty is to the National Security State which enriches them, and who are plagued by a demonstrated willingness to trample on basic Constitutional protections in order to protect it.

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[snot]

1. Excellent post!

I remain stunned that other press organizations do not defend against these kinds of attacks. Are they so sure they'll always suck up sufficiently to t.p.t.b. to avert any consequences to themselves?

[madrchsod]

2. she might be afraid her husband is mentioned in the leaks

[Tom Ripley]

7. +1,000,000

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. Lady Di thinks it's dangerous if the people knows what the bosses are doing.

Dangerous to the bosses, that is.

[Comrade Grumpy]

4. We're going to be stuck with her for six more years?

Well, at least she's a Democrat, even if a crappy one.

[Egalitarian Thug]

5. Another serial criminal in a blue jersey.

I miss many things about California, but the state parties and the weasels that populate and navigate them are not among them. Senator Boxer is pretty good and there are a handful of decent Representatives, but on the whole, both parties send criminal after criminal to Sacramento and DC.

[struggle4progress]

6. It doesn't matter what DiFi says: she's in the Senate, not in the Executive or Judicial branches.

Though it seems a distinction too subtle for some of our conspiracy theorist friends, it is actually an important distinction, since it means DiFi has no say whatsoever in any prosecutorial decisions, nor does she have any say in any courtroom determinations on the matter

She is, in this regard, simply one of 500+ folk in Congress, who has decided to express her opinion

[Raine]

8. I keep getting begging letters from her for campaign donations

like I would ever send her any money! I've heard nothing from her for 6yrs, comes election time and continual crap from her. DiFi can get her money somewhere else and her votes too. I'm sure she'll get in again but it won't be with my help.

[truedelphi]

11. And if there has ever been anyone else in the Dem Party

Who hasn't helped rearrange the lives of so many in this country for her own benefit, I can't think of their name right now.

She goes and votes for the Iraq War resolution, right after she had the Senate Ethics provisions re-written. So that action let her husband Richard Blum make a small fortune - 27 million bucks -- in war contracts based on the war.

Let the two of them fund her own campaigns. People have already shed enough blood for those two.

[girl gone mad]

9. When will Californians dump this dead-eyed war criminal?

[Sirveri]

10. I tried to primary her, but that is near impossible for an incumbent with a (D) in CA.

My one vote doesn't really mean much, and the alternative is someone with an (R). I also have no real clue how to organize such a primary challenge, and even if I could, because of the changes to the voting laws there is a risk we could split the vote and cause two Republicans to get into the general election.