Posted on 05/08/2007 7:34:26 PM PDT by Libloather
Bloggers pressure Feinstein on conflicts
Bloggers are fanning the flames of inquiries into a senator’s potential conflicts of interest.
By MICHAEL DOYLE
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON | Bloggers and activists are writing a new chapter in the marriage of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and her husband, Richard Blum.
Feinstein has real power. Blum has serious money. For 27 married years, the politician and the investor have excelled professionally while facing periodic queries about Blum’s investments.
The latest round comes powered by the Internet, fanned by activists on both right and left. The partisans find common cause in questioning Feinstein’s role in Pentagon spending while Blum was investing in defense firms.
Critics have accused Feinstein of having a conflict of interest by serving through last year as chairwoman and ranking member of the Senate’s military construction appropriations subcommittee while her husband had financial interests in two firms that rely on defense contracts.
The Senate panel approves about $16 billion annually for military construction projects.
Until 2005, Blum had major holdings in two firms, URS Corp. and Perini Corp., that rely on defense contracts.
Perini received $200 million in federal contracts from 2000 to 2006, primarily with the Army, according to records compiled by the private watchdog group OMB Watch. URS received $1.8 billion worth of contracts — primarily Air Force, Army and Navy — during the same period
Feinstein’s spokesman, Scott Gerber, said that the senator had always “acted appropriately” and within the Senate’s ethics guidelines. He denounced suggestions of conflict, first raised in articles published in the Bay Area’s free Metro weekly newspaper, and noted that the Pentagon, not Congress, decides who is awarded contracts.
“The story is filled with inaccuracies, errors and distortions,” Gerber said, “and it has been pushed by the right-wing bloggers.”
Actually, the story has migrated from left to right and back again.
On Sunday, it was the left’s turn, as female anti-war protesters gathered outside Feinstein’s San Francisco home. Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin declared that Feinstein and Blum “have profited from this war” in Iraq.
On the right, the group Judicial Watch announced its own inquiry. The Washington-based group is now preparing Freedom of Information Act requests into the URS and Perini contracts.
The Metro story, cited in hundreds of blogs since, was reported by a freelance writer who received a grant from the Nation magazine’s investigative fund. The author, Peter Byrne, said he stood by everything he wrote.
After the Nation rejected his story last fall, Byrne said he “flogged it around to a lot of liberal publications” before getting it published in Metro.
To reach Michael Doyle, send e-mail to mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com.
And Scott Gerber would be the person to tell us if she “acted inappropriately”?
Feinstein is a RAT..”STANDARDS” DO NOT (AND NEED NOT) APPLY.
This also holds true for Pelosi and Reid.
How dare you?!
An interesting follow up story would be the reason it wasn’t published by the organizations he originally submitted it to.
Of course. Don't you believe what a Demon-rat's media flack tells you?
Need I add /s?
Know why the Nation turned it down?
liberal do-do never goes anywhere.
The Senate has no ethical guidelines as far as democrats are concerned. Its a joke.
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1997 =
Sen. FEINSTEIN & Sen. BOXER suddenly announced in the media that they were returning the $10,000 they had secretly received from Communist China.
This as our citizens fight gained steam in the media to save our Long Beach Navy Base from being turned over to Communist China, in exchange for the Communist Chinese Money then flowing into the Private Residence of the CLINTON White House.
2001 =
Chinagate’s Head Moneyman JAMES RIADY stated under oath at his own Chinagate Plea Agreement hearing in Los Angeles Federal Court ..that not a single nickel he had given to Democrats was EVER returned to him.
.
Signed:..A Witness who fought to save our U.S. Long Beach Navy Base in 1997 ..and then personally attended Mr. RIADY’s Plea Agreement Hearing in 2001.
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is sen Frankenstein i mean Fienstien going to give the money to the children, I think not!
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1997 =
Rep. LORETTA SANCHEZ announced, a week following the Sen. FEINSTEIN/BOXER Chinagate media announcement, that she was returning $1,000 in Communist Chinese Money she also had received.
2001 =
A most regretful Chinagate Money Contributor JOHNNY CHUNG had already announced that the $1,000 he had given Rep. LORETTA SANCHEZ in the 1990’s had never been returned. This despite her Staff kept telling the Orange County Register newspaper over and over again that she had.
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The Metro is so anti-Bush that they once began a review of an Iraqi restaurant by getting on the soapbox for three full paragraphs about "culinary-imperialist blowback", "500-pound bombs" and "war and foreign intervention", and meddling.
Movie reviews exhibit similar out-of-nowhere, Mark Morford-ish non sequiturs from time to time as well.
And those are the nominally apolitical columns.
ping
Don’t they understand corruption and graft only matter if it is Republican Corruption. Rat corruption is expected and encouraged by the Stone Age Press.
Compare the phony charges on Delay to the Billions stolen by Fineswine.
Pray for W and Our Troops
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