The junior Senator from California expresses carefully calibrated qualified support for the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill:

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Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today made the following statement:

"While reserving final judgement on an immigration bill that has not yet been introduced, my initial reaction is as follows:

"This immigration reform proposal appears to have many features I strongly support, such as AgJobs, the DREAM Act, strong border enforcement, and a legal path for those currently living in the shadows.

"I have always had problems with a guestworker program because I believe it will lead to more illegal immigration and downward pressure on wages. Therefore, I will be supporting amendments that deal with the guestworker program and other aspects of the bill that need improvement."

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Amendments are below the minimal necessary action to take about this piece of legislation. The bill should be killed, and the President should instead enforce existing law.

The senior Senator from California emphasized her support of a single section of the so-called immigration reform bill sponsored by Senators Kennedy (D-MA) and McCain (R-AZ) that she would support in an official press release:

Washington, DC – One day after Senators announced an historic agreement on comprehensive immigration reform, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Larry Craig (R-ID) unveiled details of the agricultural workers program included in the package.

The agricultural workers program mirrors legislation that Senators Feinstein and Craig introduced earlier this year.

“Immigration is one of the most difficult areas in which to legislate, because feelings run deep on both sides of the issue,” Senator Feinstein said.  “It also must be remembered that we need 60 votes to move anything in the United States Senate.  Therefore, compromise is the only way we are going to get a bill.”

Then her press release launches into spin mode, trying to put lipstick on a pig of a bill:

This legislation is not perfect, but I believe it is a good beginning.  It is a work in progress.  It is subject to change.  Any bill has to be bipartisan, and if we cannot get Republican votes, we cannot pass a bill.

A pre-emptive strike blaming mopey Republicans if this marvelous legislation fails.

I can wish.

The Wall Street Journal took the unusual stance in today's deadtree edition of praising a suggestion from Senator Barbara Boxer:

Stop the presses: Senator Barbara Boxer of California has a good idea. Ms. Boxer, who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, suggested last week that a first step in reducing greenhouse gases would be to require that federal buildings use more efficient light bulbs, and ask federal bureaucrats to turn off their computers at night.

"Don't you think it's time the federal government were a model of energy efficiency?" she asks. We warmly agree, not least since the United States Government is the largest single consumer of energy in the United States.

The Journal then extends Senator Boxer's suggestion by pointing out that, were the Department of Energy abolished, it would save $22 billion dollars:

On behalf of combating climate change, America could live without DOE's Energy Hog Webgame for kids, which cost taxpayers $325,000.

Where's Porkbusters when you need 'em?

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on many topics other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]

Our always-vigilant junior Senator, Barbara Boxer, has introduced legislation to increase government meddling in the airline industry:

Washington, D.C. - Following incidents at JFK and Austin airports where passengers were forced to remain on planes for as long as 11 hours, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today announced that she is planning to introduce a "Passengers' Bill of Rights" in the Senate to ensure that air travelers are not unnecessarily held on planes or deprived access to basic food, water, and hygiene.

Boxer said, "I've been stuck on the tarmac many times in my travel back and forth to California. Sometimes with the weather and traffic, it's unavoidable. But to keep passengers -- which usually include infants and the elderly -- on a plane for eleven hours in the worst of conditions is absurd. If a plane is stuck on the tarmac or at the gate for hours, a passenger should have the right to deplane. No one should be held hostage on an aircraft when clearly they can find a way to get people off safely."

Boxer's legislation would require air carriers to ensure passengers access to necessary services such as food, water, and adequate restroom facilities. The legislation would also give passengers the right to safely deplane if the aircraft has remained on the ground for more than three hours after the aircraft doors have been closed.

The incidents mentioned in Boxer's press release are elaborated in press accounts.

The title of the linked article, "Govt.: Air Passengers Have No Recourse," is misleading. While the passengers have no basis for a legal suit against the thoughtless airlines, the passengers do have recourse to market mechanisms: don't fly on those airlines. If JetBlue is prone to caging passengers on the tarmac for 11 hours, that's a huge price to pay for a cheaper ticket.

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write about many topics other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]

Senator Dianne Feinstein went on CNN's Late Edition to rebuke Senate Republicans for voting against cloture on the Levin-Warner sense-of-the-Senate resolution regarding the conduct of the war in Iraq. Keep in mind that what the Republicans did was to (mostly) vote in a block against closing debate and bringing the matter to a vote.

What Senator Feinstein accused them of was: "It's obstructionism. This is not tolerable in a situation where it's the number one topic in the nation, and the Republican party prevents the Senate of the United States from debating."

On the one hand, you have Greg at Greg's List agreeing with Senator Feinstein about the poor behavior of Senate Republicans in refusing debate; and on the other hand you have JMK at Working Class Conservative pointing out the heads-I-win, tails-you-lose tactics of the Democrats.

It is not becoming behavior by the senior Senator from California to accuse her Republican colleagues of preventing debate, when they voted to keep debate open.

To be accurate, she should have accused them of blocking a vote on the resolution — that they are guilty of, and good for them.

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on many topics other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]

A while ago, I emailed the junior senator from California regarding Democratic efforts to undermine the troop increase in Iraq.

Today, I received the following email in response:

     On January 10, 2007, President Bush announced to the nation that he is ordering an escalation of U.S. forces into Iraq - an additional 21,500 troops.
 
     This so-called "new way forward" in Iraq is just another tragic step in the wrong direction. Iraq is in a civil war. All of the troops in the world can't make up for the lack of a political solution to solve this deadly conflict. Putting more U.S. troops in the middle of a civil war will only result in the loss of more American lives.
 
     Since American forces went into Iraq in March 2003, more than 3,000 of our troops have been killed and over 22,500 more have been wounded. Yet we are nowhere near a solution to the grave crisis in Iraq .
 
     After conducting the most extensive independent assessment of the war in Iraq to date, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) concluded that the "situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and that "current U.S. policy is not working." The ISG report is helping the nation face the hard realities and hard choices in Iraq .
 
     I agree with the ISG that the Iraqi people must take control of their own country. As such, I do not support a large influx of U.S. troops into Iraq , and I believe that we must end our open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of U.S. troops in Iraq .
 
 
     Throughout the month of January, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding hearings on the war. As a member of this Committee, I am working with my colleagues to help forge a new direction in Iraq , one that does not escalate the number of U.S. forces but demands the Iraqi people reach a compromise on their own and forces Iraqi security forces to take responsibility for protecting their own people.
 
     Above all, I hope that the Foreign Relations Committee hearings and the outrage that the American public has expressed at the idea of escalating the war will force the President to understand that the American people are rejecting his failed strategy in Iraq.

Obviously a form response, with no direct answer to anything in my email. Most especially, she does not address the issue of undermining a Command-in-Chief in time of war, or the encouragement given to the enemy.

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on many topics other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]

Sen. Barbara Boxer has declared that the Senate has the power to manage the Iraq war, more or less:

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, for example, is a sponsor of a bill that would call for troops to come home in 180 days and allow for a minimum number of forces to be left behind to hunt down terrorists and train Iraqi security forces.

"Read the Constitution," Boxer told her colleagues last week. "The Congress has the power to declare war. And on multiple occasions, we used our power to end conflicts."

Congress used its war powers to cut off or put conditions on funding for the Vietnam war and conflicts in Cambodia, Somalia and Bosnia.

Under the Constitution, lawmakers have the ability to declare war and fund military operations, while the president has control of military forces.

Sen. Boxer mischaracterizes the result of the Congressional use of budgetary power. Conflict was not ended, merely the immediate involvement of the United States. The results were generally catastrophic for those abandoned to fend for themselves.

Further, extracting United States military forces from Iraq will not strengthen domestic security, but rather weaken our ability to influence international events short of the use of force.

Ill-considered, Sen. Boxer.

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on many topics other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]

I am disappointed but not surprised to report that Senator Dianne Feinstein voted in favor of sending the non-binding resolution opposing the increase in troop level to the Senate floor:

The resolution is expected to have a vote on the Senate floor by the end of the month. Senator Dianne Feinstein tells ABC7 she's working on her own legislation to rescind the President's authority to conduct the war.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D): "I think the time has come to have the authorization for use of military force to expire."

Senator Feinstein says Congress gave the President permission to go to war and if her legislation passes, that permission will end.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D): "That way we can take a very strong policy stance and go online essentially saying you're authority to carry out this augmentation ends on September 30th of this year."

Feinstein is still working on the legislation. She hasn't introduced it yet. But she is hoping it will enable the Democratically-controlled Congress to reign in the President without going down the much more politically problematic path of trying to limit funding for the war.

This does nothing by embolden our enemies.

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on many things other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]

Tim Graham at NewsBusters, while reporting on NPR's coverage of global-warming proposals, spotlights an interesting relationship between California's two Senators:

With Democrats returning to power in the House and Senate, political reporters touched on how they felt abused and ignored during their time in the minority. But National Public Radio isn’t treating the Republicans now as a minority. They’re treating them as nonexistent in some stories. On Friday’s Morning Edition broadcast, reporter Elizabeth Shogren assembled an entire story on new Democratic proposals to halt global warming, but there were no Republicans, no energy industry representatives, and no warming skeptics. They only heard new socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders saying "one has got to be a moron" not to be concerned.

No one in the Shogren story was a "liberal" (not to mention a socialist – Sanders was merely described as "independent.") The proposed bills weren’t liberal either, just "aggressive." It was the Bernie Sanders-Barbara Boxer bill versus the Dianne Feinstein bill, which seemed conservative by comparison.

I have myself noted that Dianne Feinstein — at most center-left — appears conservative in comparison to Barbara Boxer. It's almost a good cop - bad cop routine to make conservative Californians slump in gratitude for the mere existence of Senator Feinstein.

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on many topics other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]

According to an AP report,  Dianne Feinstein took to the Senate floor to accuse President Bush of ousting politically inconvenient federal prosecutors:

Kevin Ryan, chief federal prosecutor for the state's Northern District, and Carol Lam, who headed the state's Southern District, both announced Tuesday they would be leaving.

The two are among 11 top federal prosecutors who have resigned or announced their resignations since an obscure provision in the USA Patriot Act reauthorization last year enabled the U.S. attorney general to appoint replacements without Senate confirmation.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, complained on the Senate floor Tuesday that the White House is using the provision to oust Ryan, Lam and other federal prosecutors and replace them with Republican allies.

'The Bush administration is pushing out U.S. attorneys from across the country under the cloak of secrecy and then appointing indefinite replacements,' Feinstein said.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales denied the claim, saying administration officials 'in no way politicize these decisions.'

Actually, the quote in the AP article doesn't include anything from Senator Feinstein about the President's motives.

So I'll send an email to the Senator, and check the Congressional Record in the meantime.

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on many things other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]

What a tin ear.

Here is California's junior Senator yesterday, upbraiding Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice:

Rice appeared before the Senate in defense of President Bush's tactical change in Iraq, and quickly encountered Boxer.

"Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price," Boxer said. "My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young."

Then, to Rice: "You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family."

This is a pernicious display of sniping obtuseness.

There is no draft, so only individuals who volunteer serve in the armed forces. But we are all going to pay a "particular price" if we are not successful in cleaning Islamists out of Iraq. See, for instance, the attack on the American embassy in Greece, for instance.

The problem of Islamic extremism will not magically vanish if we pull troops out of Iraq. It will get worse, until it is faced down. Facing it down will be painful, and likely take a long time. Senator Boxer's grandchild will not always be "too young."

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on many things other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]

But only if you agree with her.

The following note is currently posted on Senator Boxer's official Senate website:

Dear Constituents,

I would like to thank the thousands of you who took the time to sign my petition stating that we should begin to redeploy our troops from Iraq now to allow Iraqis to begin to take charge of their own country and to remove our brave troops from the chaotic and dangerous situation there.

I have delivered this petition to the White House.

Senator Boxer helpfully provides a link to her statement calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

No petition was posted to allow constituents to voice a dissenting opinion. If you would like to do so, I encourage you to contact Senator Boxer right away.

Maybe she'll thank you.

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on many topics other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]

Have a safe and happy New Year's celebration.

We'll be back on January 2, 2007.

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on many topics other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]

Earlier this month, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) put out a press release announcing that one of its local directors in California had received recognition from California's junior Senator:


This was noticed by such folks as Jihad Watch and Americans Against Hate:


Much to everyone's surprise, Senator Boxer has now rescinded the award, saying that her staff took the initiative in giving it to Elkarra and that she knew nothing about it until afterwards.

It says something about the junior Senator from California that her staff would think Basim Elkarra worthy of such an award. At least "diversity" and "tolerance" did not trump common sense in the long run in this particular incident.

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on many topics other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]

We're busy with family and the observance of the Christmas holy day.

From our family to your family, we wish you the best of the holiday season, whatever your religious pursuasion.

We'll be back on National Returns Day.

[You are invited to visit www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on many topics other than the members of the California delegation to the United States Senate.]