Posted on 09/29/2023 6:07:41 AM PDT by Red Badger
KEY POINTS
* Dianne Feinstein, the oldest member of the U.S. Senate and the longest-serving senator from California, has died at age 90.
* Feinstein’s death leaves vacant her powerful Senate seat, requiring Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint a temporary successor.
* The Democratic senator’s decades-long career was studded with major legislative achievements on issues including gun control and the environment.
* Ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) attends a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing examining issues facing prisons and jails during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on Capitol Hill June 2, 2020 in Washington, D.C.
Dianne Feinstein, the oldest member of the U.S. Senate and the longest-serving senator from California, has died at age 90, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News on Friday.
The Democrat’s passing marks the end of a boundary-pushing political career that spanned more than half a century, studded with major legislative achievements on issues including gun control and the environment.
Feinstein had planned to retire at the end of her current term in 2024.
Feinstein’s death leaves vacant her powerful Senate seat, requiring Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint a temporary successor.
A San Francisco native, Feinstein cleared a path for women in politics as she rose the ranks of leadership. After two failed bids for mayor, she was elected president of San Francisco’s board of supervisors in 1978, becoming the first woman to hold the title.
Feinstein was made acting mayor of the city later that year, after then-Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, her colleague on the board of supervisors, were assassinated by Dan White, a former member of the same board.
In later interviews, Feinstein recalled finding Milk’s body and searching for a pulse by putting her finger in a bullet hole.
Feinstein was the first to announce the murders to the press. She was appointed mayor a week later, again becoming the first woman elevated to the office.
The tragedy had the side effect of jumpstarting Feinstein’s political career, but the trauma of the day stuck with her even decades later.
“I never really talk about this,” Feinstein said with a sigh when asked about the murders in a CNN interview in 2017.
Her streak of firsts continued at the national level. Feinstein lost a gubernatorial bid in 1990, but two years later won a special election to the U.S. Senate, becoming California’s first female senator.
Weeks later, the state’s second female senator, Barbara Boxer, was sworn into office, making California the first state in the U.S. to be represented in the Senate by two women.
Their 1992 elections helped define the “Year of the Woman,” in which four Democratic women were newly elected to the Senate — more than doubling the chamber’s female representation.
In the Senate, Feinstein clinched some of her biggest legislative achievements. She wrote and championed the 1994 assault weapons ban, both a landmark bill and a continuation of a career-long effort to enact stricter gun controls.
The legislation passed Congress and was signed by then-President Bill Clinton, albeit with major compromises including a 10-year sunset provision. The ban expired in 2004 during the administration of George W. Bush.
She also sponsored bills that protect millions of acres of California’s desert, worked to create a nationwide AMBER alert network, helped reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and fought for the release of a lengthy report detailing the CIA’s torture practices, among other accomplishments.
Over her three decades in the Senate, Feinstein has generally been seen as a political moderate in her party. In the 1990s and 2000s, that reputation made Feinstein highly popular — but much of that popularity eroded in the proceeding years as California’s political tint shifted toward deeper shades of blue.
As her centrism grew increasingly out of fashion, Feinstein’s standing in her final stretch in office was further diminished by a crescendo of skepticism about her mental fitness for the Senate.
A damning report from the San Francisco Chronicle in April 2022 featured unnamed Democratic colleagues of Feinstein fretting over her apparent decline in mental acuity. Feinstein defended her ability to govern, while acknowledging that she had been going through an “extremely painful and distracting” period as her late husband, financier Richard Blum, had battled cancer.
By the time Feinstein announced that she would not seek reelection at the end of her term in 2024, multiple Democratic politicians had already launched campaigns to succeed her.
That’s pretty much how I see it. The problem is not the elected leaders. It is those that elect them.
That’s why I say, regarding the 2020 presidential election, the best case scenario is that it was stolen. The worst case scenario is that it wasn’t.
Well that was....odd.
I want to know who cast this vote for her. Was she in a coma?
to that thing in the wheelchair just a few years later?
As will I.
I suppose they can do that with anyone until they actually die. I think that is exactly what they did with Feinstein. But actual death is a hard stop in the real world.
i.e. Weekend at Bernie’s may be fiction, but it DOES happen in the real world with people who are “as good as dead” but can still be used as a prop. Think Joe Biden.
That is exactly what we’ve been enduring since January of 2021.
Ole’ Di has always been one of the democRATs coveted MVPs—always willing to vote in lock step. Her passing should take the impeachment inquiry out of the news for a days just when Republicans were beginning to zero in on the target. Wonder where hilLIARy’s been in the last 24 hours?
Oh my, That is hilarious!!!
To the Democratic party Dianne Feinstein was barely human. She was only letter. “D”. That’s the only purpose she served for years.
You'll have to do that in the cafeteria where they are.
Caution, the coffee is VERY hot there.
Well,*that* would be interesting...assuming that it could be done legally.
He must be very careful. Any misstep could land him in hot water with the Feds, The Party elites or the Voters.............
Is that Governor Hair Gel? Looks like he just had a good time with her having her heels up in the air.
I’ve used the metaphore before regarding seeing Hitler and a Jew he gassed, having coffee in Heaven’s cafeteria. But it takes an imagination, I confess. It assumes a universalist perspective (all people are “saved”), which I don’t really share.
I believe that all people think they are doing what is best, no matter how barbaric. It only proves why all men need the blood of Christ. But sometimes what they do is so barbaric that they don’t even see the problem with what they are doing.
Think of them as a guy that just runs down and kills “Just stop oil” protesters. He thinks it’s the right thing to do. And we all have fantasies about doing things like that, but most of us are constrained by our conscience and/or God. But some are so narcissistic, or they are atheists that are their own god, that they feel completely justified in horrendous acts, and honestly believe they are doing the right thing - whatever that means.
That is why people like Feinstein, and even the more barbaric, like Hitler, need to be stopped WITHOUT EMOTION OR VENGEANCE (because vengeance is the Lord’s). But via use of the cold and impartial law.
But Feinstein is an excellent test case for why it’s not a bad thing that people have a limited life span. I don’t miss Mr. Byrd either, BTW.
Today's FReeper prayer should be:
Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray: and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
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