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David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
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DiFi goes rogue
Matt Ygelesias thinks Diane Fienstein is "go[ing] rogue" and "making trouble." Maybe so, but if not wanting to look as stupid as Hary Reid does on the Burris issue and responding to an obvious snub from the Obama transition team is going rogue, she probably needs to do thsi more often.
I have no problems with Feinstein's positions on anything this week. She pretty much exactly mirrors my take on Roland Burris, so I obviously have no problem with her there and won't dive into the issue anymore than I already have here.
And regarding Panetta, her position makes perfect sense. She had a preference for the head of the CIA, and the Obama team chose to go another direction, which was fine. But they also chose to brief junior members of intelligence committee on their choice before leaking it to the media, but not the incoming or outgoing chairs. The Obama team is calling that a "mistake." Clearly it was, but to be honest, I have a hard time understanding how they could make that mistake unintentionally. They knew enough to schedule briefings with other members of the intelligence committee, but just forgot to give a heads up to the person who was going to chair the confirmation hearings? That sounds like an intentional snub to me. So Feinstein played the game, put her back up about the nomination, and now likely has the Obama camp making some concessions to her in exchange for a smooth confirmation hearing. Probably a lot of concessions, since this was a fairly public snubbing. So, on this issue, I think Feinstein did exactly what she needed to do to make sure that she stays in the loop on intelligence issues in the future and reminded Obama that they can both play hardball if that's what he wants. That's Washington politics at work, and if you want the legislative branchto perform their proper oversight role, this is what needed to happen in this case.
Posted by on 7 January 2009 at 9:34 AM
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