Shame of the Senate, shame of the magazine

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the state's Democratic Party pushed back Wednesday against a proposal by a coalition of progressives to censure the four-term senator for her recent votes siding with the Bush Administration, dismissing the proposal as a distraction put forth by activists who did not speak for the majority of Democrats in the Golden State.
Feinstein's office defended what they called her record of standing up to Bush, citing her role in recent probes into allegations of partisan firing at the Justice Department, as well as her votes against the Supreme Court nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
"She led the Judiciary Committee investigation into [former Attorney General] Alberto Gonzales and the firing of the U.S Attorneys," said Feinstein spokesman Scott Gerber. "What Sen. Feinstein is going to continue to do is fight for this issues that are important for all Californians."


The above is from Max Follmer's "Dems Set To Kill Feinstein Censure Resolution" (The Huffington Post). The censure measure did fail -- not because it didn't have solid grounds for proceeding but because Di-Fi can toss around a lot of money. We're speaking of her fundraising abilities but we'll get to her personal profit margin in a moment. First, let's be clear that Di-Fi's votes against Roberts and Alito do not in any way erase the way she conducted herself in the hearings. To focus on the Alito hearing, for some strange reason, she felt the perfect thing to do in the midst of Senator Ted Kennedy's tough questions was to interrupt. As he was setting up a question, Feinstein interrupted him to say, "Read the last sentence." Did she really think he wasn't going to? Kennedy was setting up the argument. Feinstein's interjecting herself -- during another senator's allotted time -- not only was unprofessional, it wasn't helpful. After awhile, you have to wonder if she's not intentionally being ineffecutal?



When talk of censuring her first arose, you saw the usual party hacks insist that she was a loyal Democrat -- often inventing percentages to demonstrate how often she voted with the Democratic Party. It would have been nice if some reality could have been introduced to the conversation. For that, we'd need a strong independent media.



On February 25th, Katrina vanden Heuvel -- editor, publisher and destroyer of The Nation magazine -- offered up "Suppressing News: Deja Vu" to celebrate how brave the magazine was during the early 60s. It's easy to wax poetic of the past. Under her reign?





Project Censored 2008 is out and features their "Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008" -- the top censored stories is an annual feature. Story number 23 is Peter Byrne's expose on US Senator Dianne Feinstein who has "voted for appropriations woth billions of dollars to her husband's firms." We've noted that here before, we've noted that The Nation magazine funded the investigation and we've noted that they refused to pay for it. What's new is Peter Byrne's update where he notes that Joe Conason ("from The Nation Institute") wanted The Nation's name removed from the funding credit "because, he said, Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation's editor and publisher, did not want the magazine or its non-profit institute to be postively associated with [Rush] Limbaugh. . . . The back story to that encounter is that, in October, vanden Heuvel had abruptly killed the Feinstein story, which had been scheduled to run as a cover feature before the November 2006 election in which Feinstein was up for reelection."



Associated with Limbaugh? Limbaugh was calling out Fienstein for her war profiteering. That is what Byrne was writing about. Apparently, an independent magazine run by vanden Heuvel kills hard-hitting stories out of fear that the reports might get attention.



Byrne goes on to quote from a letter to him from the magazine's Robert Moser which states that the story was killed due to the fact Feinstein wasn't "facing a strong challenge for reelection." Is The Nation still trying to pretend to be independent media? Use the link to catch up if DiFi's war profitteering is new to you, but this should have been a huge scandal and any outlet should have been glad to have the expose. vanden Heuvel kills the piece and, note, it's because there's no strong electoral challenge. That's what journalistic decisions are based upon?



Journey with us to pages 208 and 209 of Amy Goodman and David Goodman's The Exception to the Rulers. In that section they are discussing the press coverage of the War Crimes of Bob Kerrey while serving in Vietnam (slaughtering innocent civilians). On page 208, they write:



As shocking as the incident was, so too was the media cover-up. Newsweek had the story from its national security correspondent, Gregory Vistica, in late 1998, when Kerrey was considering a run for the presidency. But top Newsweek editors spiked the story when Kerry decided not to run. Vistica later quit the magazine and brought the story to The New York Times Magazine and 60 Minutes II.

"We could have run the story," said Evan Thomas, a Newsweek assistant managing editor. "We just didn't want to do it to the guy when he wasn't running for president."

Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker added that when Kerrey's presidential aspirations ended, "the relevance of this story changed a little bit."

Relevance for whom? It was still relevant for the families of the unarmed Vietnamese civilians who were slaughtered. Newsweek was not concerned about the victims, but about the feelings of the perpretator, a powerful U.S. Senator.



That's disgusting. And it's exactly the same thing The Nation did. There was no concern for the victims, just a need to protect "a powerful U.S. Senator."



As Amanda Witherell (San Francisco Bay Guardian) pointed out last month, "Sometimes the story behind a story is just as juicy as the story itself." A sure sign of how EMBARRASSING this is for the magazine can be found in the fact that Ben Wyskida felt the need to post -- "nationBen" is the handle -- and deny the quality of the article. For the record, Ben's title is "Publicy Director." As such, Young Ben has no first-hand knowledge of the article (he was SOOOOOO much more interesting when he was all about sex and sarcasm). Young Ben knows a magazine's party-line, if not reality, and feels the need to offer that that the rag has been happy to go after Hillary Clinton.



Yes, they have. But let's all stop kidding that this had anything to do with what Hillary did or didn't do. This is a personal grudge and the magazine's not supposed to be used for that. Now while KvH was killing that pre-election article, she also killed a post election article, Christopher Ketcham's investigation (run by CounterPunch). [We noted that in March.] These are far from the only stories that magazine has killed -- articles that have found other homes. Apparently reporting on the War Profiteering of Feinstein might interfere with the magazine's 'purpose' -- Democratic Party organ.



Feinstein's supporters were able to recently portary her publicly as a "good Democrat" and we don't think a good Democrat profits from a war (illegal or legal) nor do we think a "good Democrat" uses her committee positions to steer business to her husband.



If The Nation were "good independent media," a lot more people would be aware that Feinstein's profitted from the illegal war the same way many think to this day she profitted from the murder of Harvey Milk. She rode that assassination to high profile and high office and disgusted many in the process.



A while back there was talk of Feinstein running for governor. Wasn't going to happen. She can't go up against a charamastic opponent (for all of Ah-nulds many faults and many crimes, a number of people find him charasmatic). She really can't run for any office except as an incumbent. She has too much baggage. She knows it and the polls she commissioned when she flirted -- ahead of the recall -- with running for governor demonstrated that the voters knew it as well. Ahnuld was the nightmare Republican for Di-Fi. He projected a sweeter nature than any of her opponents in Senate races have. They come on strong and menacing and allow Di-Fi to play the 'sweet, little me' card -- the same persona she utilizes in committee hearings.



There's nothing 'little' about the amount of money she and her husband have raked in over the illegal war. There's nothing 'sweet' about a war profiteer.



An article that brought that home should have run in The Nation, was supposed to run in the magazine. Instead it was killed because she didn't have "a strong contender." It's not at all different from Newsweek deciding to kill their story on Bob Kerrey when he decided not to run for president. Truth matters or it doesn't. Independent media tells it or it doesn't.



Under Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation is becoming more famous for what it doesn't run than what it prints.