A DIANA WEST READER FOR TODAY ****
SEN. FEINSTEIN’S HUBBY…A POINT MAN ON GORE’S TV SALE TO AL JAZEERA
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2443/Sen-Feinsteins-Hubby-a-Point-Man-on-Gores-Current-TV-Sale-to-Al-Jazeera.aspx
Via Drudge, a Hollywood Reporter story on a $5 million lawsuit filed by a consultant who was cut out of a share of the Current TV/Al Jazeera deal. What is even more interesting is the key role David Blum, Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s husband and a Current TV boardmember, played in presenting the deal to the rest of the board.
The plaintiff, media consultant John Terenzio, seems to specialize in handling propaganda-disseminating organs of state dictatorships (China, Qatar) for US markets.
Terenzio says that in June, he identified Current TV as a potential acquisition target for Al Jazeera given its vast distribution network and well-publicized financial woes.
MEANWHILE BACK IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2440/Meanwhile-Back-in-Afghanistan-and-Iraq.aspx
Waste, fraud and US-taxpayer-abuse.
The final Special Inspector General’s Iraq Report (SIGIR) is out this week. Curl up with it and find out where $60 billion taxpayer dollars went in Iraq (spoiler alert: down the drain). Boosters point to the relative success of Iraqi security forces in “keeping order” (trained at a cost of $20-plus billion) — and Petraeus and Crocker, in their introduction to the report, still burble on, old Western-serial-style, about providing “new opportunity to the citizens of the Land of the Two Rivers” — although somehow it seems relevant to note that Iraqi security forces under dictator Saddam Hussein also “kept order,” sans such costly US training.
Out of Afghanistan, the waste, fraud and abuse story is even more grotesque. Afghanistan’s Special Inspector General estimates that Americans have spent $100 billlion (and counting) on construction projects. After all, there was little to re-construct, except the Kajaki Dam, which we first built back in the 1950s. Now, USAID is pulling the plug on it.
Enough said? Not on your life.
RAND PAUL’S FILIBUSTER
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2441/Rand-Pauls-Fillibuster-The-Opening-Statement.aspx
Yesterday, March 6, 2013, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), embarked on a filluster to block the nomination of John Brennan to director of the CIA pending confirmation from the Obama White House that it agrees the president is bound by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees Americans’ right to due process, and therefore will never use drones to kill American non-combatants on American soil.
To date, the White House answer is silence.
Here are Paul’s opening remarks, which began at 11:47 am, excerpted from the uncorrected transcript to be found at Paul’s official website. Paul’s dramatic, public, and instructive defense of Constitutional rights against executive overreach is the best thing to have happened to America in a long time.
FILIBUSTER QUESTIONS FROM SEN TED CRUZ
The following exchange is from Hour 4:
SEN. CRUZ: After three times declining to answer a direct question — would killing a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil with a drone strike, when that U.S. citizen did not present an imminent threat, would that be Constitutional — after three times simply saying it would not be “appropriate,” finally the fourth time, attorney general holder responded to vigorous questioning.
In particular, the course of the questioning, the point was made that Attorney General Holder is not an advice columnist giving advice on etiquette and appropriateness. The attorney general is the chief legal officer of the United States. And I will note that I observed it was more than a little astonishing that the chief legal officer of the United States could not give a simple one-word, one-syllable, two-letter answer to the question: Does the Constitution allow the federal government to kill with a drone strike a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil who is not posing an immediate threat? The proper answer, I suggested at that hearing, should be no, and that should be a very easy answer for the attorney general to give. Finally, the fourth time around, attorney general holder stated – quote – “Let me be clear. Translate my appropriate to no. I thought I was saying no. All right? No.”
American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character by Diana West (May 28, 2013)
COMING MAY 28, 2013
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