cross-posted at skippy and a literal cornucopia of other community blogs.
after reading busy, busy, busy’s report that our own sen. dianne feinstein took no stand on sen. feingold’s call to censure smirky mchitlerburton, but was happy to personally introduce a resolution to censure bill clinton in 1999, we decided to ask her ourselves to explain the differences between the two occasions.
we called her santa monica office, and spoke with a lovely young woman named irene. we asked irene what the senator’s position was on sen. feingold’s resolution to censure president bush for illegally wiretapping american citizens.
[ed. note: tho the policy of this blog is to never refer to awol by name, nor call him president, we doubted that senatorial staff would understand our style sheet, so we used common language and titles to expedite understanding. although we did insist on speaking all in lower case.]
more after the jump:
irene informed us that although senator feinstein has not made any statement regarding her position on the censure resolution, the senator is named to a special inteligence subcommittee to investigate awol’s (our usage) wire-tapping further. irene assured us that sen. feinstein is against any illegal spying of any kind, and has “many questions” about this issue that she intends to ask on the subcommittee.
we then proceeded to point out that sen. feinstein herself introduced a resolution to censure bill clinton in 1999, after the impeachment proceedings. we asked irene what the senator’s position was regarding these two proceedings?
irene, clever girl that she is, told us that the senator hasn’t stated a position on this. we then told irene that, all in all, we’d give sen. feinstein a c+ for this issue: while we were happy that sen. feinstein is against illegal spying on americans and is going to be on the intelligence subcommitttee investigating this further, we were disappointed that she didn’t support sen. feingold’s resolution in light of her own resolution to censure clinton in 1999.
irene thanked us, asked us our zip code (we suppose to make sure we were constituents), and promised to forward our comments to the senator.
it was a painless, indeed, pleasant conversation, and we suggest that if any other californians (or americans in any other state) want to call sen. feinstein or their own senators in regard to sen. feingold’s resolution, please be polite. we also suggest you have a copy of the facts in front of you, so you don’t ramble. and remember that the staff of your senators, no matter how empathetic (or hostile) to your point of view, are not the enemy, and deserve your respect.
still, we urge everyone to continue to call and ask for their senators’ official stance. and don’t hesitate to make your opinions known. remember, these jerks work for us.
addendum: thanks to alegre’s” dkos diary, we find moveon.org’s” petition to censure awol.
