SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN WANTS OBAMA TO WALL-OFF 1 MILLION ACRES IN DESERT

U.S. Senator 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

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 asked President Barack Obama on Friday to bypass Congress and use the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create three new national monuments in the California desert.

The move  would extend federal protection over more than 1 million acres of mountain ranges, sandy expanses and forests running roughly between Palm Springs and the Nevada border.

Feinstein has argued that the area she wants designated as ‘Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains’ as a home to mountain lions, the California desert tortoise and bighorn sheep. But the real effort is to ban off-roaders, hunters and miners.

Section 3 required an “examination of ruins, the excavation of archaeological sites, or the gathering of objects of antiquity” on lands administered by the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, or War. The objects were then to be collected “for the benefit of reputable museums, universities, colleges, or other recognized scientific or educational institutions, with a view to increasing the knowledge of such objects.”

But over the next century, Presidents from both parties, beginning with Republican Theodore Roosevelt, took advantage of the law to restrict private economic opportunity and take overrule state control. Republicans from a number of states consider the law to be outdated and are pushing for bills that would curtail Presidential authority.

President Barack Obama in February of this year proclaimed Pullman Historic District of Chicago, Browns Canyon in Colorado, and a former Honouliuli Internment Camp site in Hawaii as national monuments under the Antiquities Act. Congressional Republicans from Colorado reacted harshly to the designation of Browns Canyon, with onerepresentative saying Obama was acting like “King Barack.”

Although the act specifically directs the President to limit the designation to the “smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected,” Yet, 16 Presidents have designated more than over 150 monuments. Beginning in 1906, Devils Tower in Wyoming became the first national monument. Other iconic monuments include the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Channel Islands and the Arches National Park.

President George W. Bush used the Antiquities Act five times and President Bill Clinton used it 19 times. But of the 285 million acres of land and marine areas designated as monuments, President Obama used his powers under the Antiquities Act to set aside 260 million acres of land and water.

Via: Breitbart

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Democrats Scurry From Sanctuary Ship

Democrats now will say anything to distance themselves from sanctuary city policies, even though they have supported these policies for years. In an exclusive CNN interview Tuesday, Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked about San Francisco's refusal to hand over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement seven-time convicted felon and five-time deportee Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez. He stands accused in the fatal shooting of Kathryn Steinle as she took an evening stroll on Pier 14 last week. (After telling a local TV station he shot Steinle by accident, Lopez-Sanchez has pleaded not guilty to murder.) Clinton answered, "The city made a mistake not to deport someone that the federal government strongly felt should be deported. So I have absolutely no support for a city that ignores the strong evidence that should be acted on."

In a 2007 Democratic presidential debate, the late Tim Russert asked Clinton if she would allow sanctuary cities to disobey federal law. "Well, I don't think there is any choice," she answered. Immigrants may not talk to police if "they think you're also going to be enforcing the immigration laws." She did not add a caveat that she wanted local law enforcement to work with immigration officials if the federal government had strong feelings that an individual should be deported.

In 2008, Clinton voted against an amendment to yank some federal funds from sanctuary cities. California Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer voted likewise -- but it didn't stop them from criticizing San Francisco for releasing a repeat offender.

"The 2008 budget amendment was a choice between sending a political message or funding California law enforcement, and I chose to fund the police," Feinstein explained in an email. "I continue to believe we can deport criminals who are undocumented and still support law enforcement."

Perhaps Feinstein and Clinton are living back in 1985, when Feinstein was mayor and signed San Francisco's sanctuary city law. It was supposed to help immigrants seeking asylum from war-torn El Salvador and Guatemala. Four years later, the law was expanded to cover all immigrants. Then, in 2013, the Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance, signed by Mayor Ed Lee, that prohibits city law enforcement from releasing undocumented immigrants to ICE based on a detainer request alone. (There's an exception for recent violent felons, but Lopez-Sanchez did not qualify.)

Sanctuary City supporters cannot say they were not warned. Recently, ICE Director Sarah Saldana told a House committee that reduced cooperation from state and local governments "may increase the risk that dangerous criminals are returned to the streets, putting the public and our officers at greater risk."

Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., asked Saldana if it would help if Congress made it mandatory for local governments to cooperate with ICE -- the sort of bill already rejected by Clinton, Feinstein and Boxer. "Thank you. Amen. Yes," Saldana answered.

Via: Real Clear Politics

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Senate Passes USA Freedom Act; No Amendments; On to Obama

The Senate voted 67-32 Tuesday afternoon to pass the House’s USA Freedom Act without any of the amendments offered by Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

The legislation will now go to President Obama’s desk to be signed into law Tuesday evening.

The USA Freedom Act that was previously passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would, in effect, stop the NSA’s bulk surveillance collection and reform the programs that lapsed when the Patriot Act expired at midnight Sunday, after GOP presidential candidate,Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), filibustered the spy program for 11 hours.

The first amendment that failed to pass was the McConnell-Burr amendment. According to the Guardian, this amendment would “Change the amicus on the Fisa court – the public-interests advocate who would argue, in part, about civil liberties concerns to the secret court that oversees many surveillance programs.”

McConnell and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC)wanted an amendment to the USA Freedom Act that extends the time for the government to transfer custody of phone records to private telecom companies from six months to 12 months.

“McConnell has also filed amendments that would require the US intelligence chief to certify the implementation of the new phone-records regime, demand notification of changes made by telecom companies to the kinds of call records they generate and reduce transparency in the process by which the secret Fisa court reviews the government’s surveillance orders,” the Guardian reported.

However, the Guardian correctly predicted it was unlikely that McConnell’s amendments would pass, as they lacked support from both Republicans and Democrats.

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) said prior to the final vote, “I think it should be passed as is if we want to get it back in operation, and I think it’s foremost that this be operable.” She suggested she might be open to amendments in the future. “We could amend it … but we need to get this done now.”

Via: Breitbart

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Hill leaders: Terror threat growing in US; intel community not the 'bad guys'

The worldwide terror threat is growing and changing, making Americans less safe than they were in years past, the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees said Sunday.

“Terror is up worldwide,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “The statistics indicate that. The fatalities are way up.”

Feinstein made her comments on CNN’s “State of the Union” during a joint interview with Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who argued the terror group Al Qaeda continues to grow and consolidate.

“What's happening in places like Syria [is] that you have a pooling of Al Qaeda and affiliates. …  Groups have changed the way they communicate, which means it's less likely that we're going to be able to detect something prior to an event.”

Rogers also suggested that public scrutiny over U.S. intelligence work, brought on by recent disclosures about the efforts of the National Security Agency and others, has hurt anti-terror efforts.

“We’re fighting amongst ourselves here in this country about the role of our intelligence community,” he said. “That is having an impact on our ability to stop what is a growing number of threats. Our intelligence community isn’t the bad guys.”

Via: Fox News

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[VIDEO] EXCLUSIVE - RAND PAUL: 'WE WANT OUR FREEDOMS BACK'

On Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) released a video to Breitbart News exclusively in which he argued that the surveillance state under President Obama had grown beyond any reasonable proportions. “We were once outraged and dismayed and spurred to resist when British soldiers came knocking at our door with illegitimate warrants seeking taxes on our papers. Today,” Paul continued, “your government responds that there is no expectation of privacy once you consign your records to a third party. Your government applies that the Fourth Amendment applies not at all to your bank records, your Visa bill, your internet searches or purchases or emails. If not resistance, shouldn’t there at least be outrage?”

Paul said, “Imagine for a moment what information could be gathered from your Visa bill,” mentioning health information, political information, and personal information. “Are we so afraid of terrorists that we are willing to give up the very freedoms that separate us from them?” Paul asked.

He mentioned pro-surveillance senators who argued that Americans were not being spied upon, showing a picture of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). “The surveillance state was made to disappear through the legerdemain of defining it out of existence,” Paul stated.

Citing The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera, Paul explained, “Kundera captures the heart of the debate: the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting…against allowing the state to define away its usurpations. Will we allow defenders of the surveillance state to airbrush history and define away the notion of spying? Will we sit idly by as our expectation of freedom is defined downward?”

He added, “Will we be sunshine patriots, or will we stand up like free men and women and say, ‘Enough is enough, we want our freedoms back’?”

Via: Breitbart

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Dianne Feinstein joins push to keep health plans

It’s not just red-state Democrats who want to take aggressive steps to mend controversial provisions in Obamacare.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that she will co-sponsor a bill by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) to require insurance companies to continue offering their existing health care plans — a way to make good on President Barack Obama’s promise that consumers can keep their current coverage if they like it.

“This bill provides a simple fix to a complex problem,” Feinstein said in a statement Tuesday, calling Landrieu’s proposal a “commonsense fix” and urged Congress to pass it “quickly.”

(Also on POLITICO: Durbin: ACA line needed clarification)

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has no plans to bring Obamacare delay bills to the floor, and most Senate Democrats appear to be waiting until the end of the month — the date by which the administration has promised to fix the problematic health care website — to demand major delays to the law’s implementation.

Feinstein’s support is more evidence that an increasing number of congressional Democrats are getting uneasy about last month’s bungled rollout of the health care law – Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement.

In her statement, Feinstein said she has gotten 30,842 calls, e-mails and letters from her constituents on the issue. One man from Rancho Mirago, Calif., told Feinstein that he is being forced to spend more than $400 extra to pay for coverage through Obamacare that essentially mirrors his existing plan.

Via: Politico

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[VIDEO] Feinstein: Take Down Healthcare.gov Until It’s Fixed

California senator Dianne Feinstein revealed on Sunday that she told the White House, in the wake of the botched rollout of the health-care exchanges, that the administration should pull down Healthcare.gov until it is functioning properly. Her advice was rejected. “They believe that they need to keep it running and that they can sort out the difficulties,” she said.

Feinstein also conceded that the president did not make clear that millions would lose their health plans as a result of the law. Though she indicated that she is murky on the details of the law, she told CBS’s Bob Schieffer that “I think that part of it, if true, was never made clear” and, with regard to individuals’ ability to keep insurance, “it is really very unclear, right now, exactly what the situation is.”

Nonetheless, the California senator cast some of the blame for the chaos and confusion surrounding the law on its Republican opponents and others who have spoken out against the law’s passage and implementation. “The big problem here is that there are so many destroyers in the House, in the public, in the private health-care sector that just want to destroy, and that’s not helpful,” she said.

Via: NRO
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Tech at Night: Even Dianne Feinstein tells it like it is about Edward Snowden. We have two new FCC Commissioners.

RESIZE:AAA

Tech at Night is coming when it’s plenty light out this afternoon, because I need to start getting some sleep in preparation for my 25 hour broadcast as part of the Extra Life children’s hospital charity event.

The FCC got two new commissioners this week, a good one in Michael O’Rielly, and a likely bad one in Tom Wheeler. This came only after Ted Cruz got the answers he was looking for. Then again, under Barack Obama that’s the best we could hope for.

It’s very rare that I agree with a gun grabber like Dianne Feinstein but come on, she’s annoying the right people by calling out Snowden as the traitor he is.

Anyway, now that we have a new FCC Chairman, we can at least hope he’ll take on sensible goals. I won’t hold my breath, but we can hope.

Certainly a government that fails so badly to manage its own Internet projects shouldn’t seek to gain more power over the whole Internet.

Oh look, Bitcoin crooks stealing from other Bitcoin crooks. It turns out the drug runners of the Bitcoin community aren’t even cooperative with each other, but will instead rob each other.

It’s good to see a repudiation of the blame the victim approach that so many take these days with respect to copyright reform. One can think copyright is too long but still think the freeloaders online are parasites hoping that Atlas won’t shrug.

Sometimes patent reform is a thorny issue. I’m on record saying that software patents shouldn’t be targeted specifically for erosion, that patent trolls hinder innovation instead of helping it, and that the problem with patents is that too many bad ones are issued. Well, it turns out these principles are coming into conflict under the Democrats’ ill-conceived America Invents Act. I wish we could just repeal that whole law and make the problem go away, then deal sensibly with patent issues.

Via: Red State

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Growing the Debt: Stopgap funding bill sprinkled with $$ for local projects

The stopgap bill to fund the government was only supposed to end the partial shutdown for a few months, no strings attached -- right? 

Nope. 

Despite the bill being tiny by Washington standards -- just 35 pages -- lawmakers still managed to tuck in billions of dollars in additional spending. 

Already, one item has earned some degree of notoriety. Appropriators included a line increasing the budget for an Ohio River dam project from $775 million to $2.9 billion. 

Costs for the project, approved in 1998, have soared above the original price tag. Supporters of the Olmsted Locks and Dam funding argue the additional money is necessary to reduce bottlenecking at the crossing of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who along with Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., supported the item, told Fox News that all barge traffic would be suspended if the dam wasn't funded. 

She said the funding was included in the budget bill because it is the only spending bill moving. The House had earlier approved funding for the dam, though at a lower level. 

Via: Fox News

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Washington Navy Yard Already Suffers the Restrictions That Gun Control Advocates Favor

FBIYet another mass shooting, and flags fly across the country at half-mast to mourn the 13 dead at the Washington Navy Yard—well, 12 of them, anyway, since one of the bodies was that of the murderer. Gun control advocates wasted no time in demanding new restrictions on the means of self-defense. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), who used to carry a pistol for her own defense, responded to the crime by saying, "Congress must stop shirking its responsibility and resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence in this country. We must do more to stop this endless loss of life." But the unhappy truth is that the scene of the crime, the Washington Navy Yard, is subject to many of the restrictions that gun control advocates favor. And the perpetrator, Aaron Alexis, had passed a background check for a security clearance. Unfortunately, laws and databases don't create magic forcefields against criminal intent.

Navy public affairs officers have full voicemail boxes, today, for obvious reason, so it's difficult to learn if there were specific restrictions that applied to the Washington Navy Yard or to Naval Sea Systems Command Headquarters, where the shootings took place. But military installations, despite their obvious role in waging war, come pretty close to being gun-free zones, given the rules by which personnel and visitors must abide. Or, if not strictly gun-free-zones, they're subject to tight regulations that keep most (law-abiding) people largely disarmed.

Via: Reason

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Following Navy Yard Shooting, Dianne Feinstein Calls for Stricter Gun-Control Laws

The California Democrat tried and failed to pass new measures after the Newtown tragedy. The First .357 times did not work.  Try, Try again.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, one of the Senate's leading voices on gun control, called for stricter gun laws in the aftermath of Monday's killings at Washington's Navy Yard.

The California Democrat said the deaths of the 12 people Monday were at the hands of a man armed with an AR-15, a shotgun, and a semiautomatic handgun, although details of his weapons have not been confirmed.

Her statement reads in part:

This is one more event to add to the litany of massacres that occur when a deranged person or grievance killer is able to obtain multiple weapons—including a military-style assault rifle—and kill many people in a short amount of time. When will enough be enough? Congress must stop shirking its responsibility and resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence in this country. We must do more to stop this endless loss of life.

She is one of the first prominent lawmakers to make the case for stricter gun laws in the aftermath of Monday's shooting, although several pundits reacted while the incident was still under way.

Feinstein failed several months ago in her effort to ban military-style assault rifles, among other measures. Republicans, worried about the impact these laws would have on the Second Amendment and law-abiding gun owners, helped defeat new gun-control measures.

Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, connected the several mass shootings in recent years to Monday's shooting in Washington.

While it is too early to know what policies might have prevented this latest tragedy, we do know that policies that present a real opportunity to save lives sit stalled in Congress, policies that could prevent many of the dozens of deaths that result every day from gun violence.  As long as our leaders in Congress ignore the will of the people and do not listen to those voices, we will hold them accountable. We hope Congress will listen to the voice of the people and take up legislation that will create a safer America.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., delayed a hearing on "Stand Your Ground" laws that was scheduled for Tuesday morning in light of the shooting at the Navy Yard. Sybrina Fulton, the mother of deceased Florida teen Trayvon Martin, was among the witnesses set to testify.

Via: National Journal

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Sen. Feinstein explains decision not to debate

SANTA ANA – U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Wednesday that she hasn't faced off in a debate against her Republican opponent because she's heard nothing from her challenger, Elizabeth Emken, that she needed to debate.

"There's just nothing constructive coming out of their campaign," said the four-term Democratic senator following a meeting with the Register's editorial board. She added that she's been accessible to the public and the media.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., sits down with the Orange County Register editorial board at the Register's Santa Ana headquarters Wednesday. Discussion ranged from the Iranian nuclear program response to the attacks in Benghazi and the state of the US economy.

Emken spokesman Mark Standriff scoffed at the explanation and continued to criticize the incumbent's failure to debate.

"That's unworthy of the office she's been holding for two decades and disrespectful of the people she claims to represent," Standriff said.

Feinstein noted that she has debated in the past – John van de Kamp and Pete Wilson when she ran for governor in 1990, and Tom Campbell and Gray Davis in two of her Senate races.

Polls show Emken posing less of a challenge than those four. A September Field Poll put Feinstein at 57 percent and Emken at 31 percent, a 26-point margin that grew from a 19-point advantage in July.

Feinstein has a huge financial advantage as well, having spent $12.4 million through Oct. 17 while Emken has spent $745,000, according to federal disclosures.

Via: Orange County Register

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