A Supreme Schadenfreude Moment

In what was called a "bombshell" denunciation, Senator Feinstein accused the CIA of conducting an illegal search and seizure of her Senate committees offices and work-product in, what she said, was an attempt to intimidate a legitimate congressional investigation. 

Senator Feinstein is an incurable safety freak and security hack.  She is that kind of psychotic who sees "potential risks" in just anything and is willing to batten down everything in the illusory and interminable pursuit of total safety, "as in a dream where our pursuer cannot catch us nor can we escape…" (Iliad,  Bk XXII.) 

During Senate hearings after the Oklahoma City bombing, Feinstein asked rhetorically and plaintively, "the First Amendment doesn't include the right to teach someone how to make a bomb, does it?"

Actually Dianne, the First Amendment does encompass chemistry. 

It was a small, passing remark but one that provided a glimpse into Feinstein's interior cosmos.  The remark did not come from some yahoo on a bar-stool but from a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  One would think that a person serving on one of the Government's highest law-related bodies would have some fundamental understanding of the First Article of the Constitution's Bill of Rights. 

The First Amendment does not protect a conspiracy to make a bomb but that is not what Feinstein asked; and, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, one is entitled to expect that she understands the difference between teaching and conspiring. 

What she evidently does not understand is what the First Amendment entails and requires.  James Madison, the principal author of the Bill of Rights put it this way in Federalist Paper No. 13 

"It could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes [divisive] faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency."

Although Madison was talking about political liberty and partisan animosities, he might as well have been talking about the Amendment which most primarily guarantees that liberty.

FREEDOM CARRIES RISKS. This is something Feinstein simply does not understand.  Her unwavering dedication to eliminate risks is in fact an equally unflinching crusade to exterminate freedom.

Given this security craving disorder, it is hardly surprising that Feinstein should have been the Senate's foremost champion of CIA/NSA snooping. 

She was among the first to accuse Snowden of being an enemy of peace, safety and virginity.   As the depth and scope of NSA snooping was revealed, Feinstein fought tooth and claw to allow the safety-spying to continue under the most cosmetic window dressing conceivable.  All, of course, in the name of protecting our precocious children from drugs, terrorism, and endangerments of every sort. 

It is thus supremely satisfying to watch Feinstein squeal in indignation and pain as the shoe gets shoved onto her foot.  How dare the CIA spy on her staff!!!  Do they think that they are mere ordinary, common Amurkans? The gall!

It is better still. To the schadenfreude one may add a kind of political slapstick as the CIA sues Feinstein for leaking information damaging to national security while she counter-sues the CIA for violating her (no longer-existent) Fourth Amendment rights.

We wish them both the best of luck. May they rip one another to shreds.

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