Capitol Hill Blue Forums Hot Topics & Breaking News News Dianne Feinstein dies at 90

Dianne Feinstein, former San Francisco mayor who steered the city through the aftermath of a politically motivated assassination of then mayor George Moscone and openly gay district supervisor Harvey Milk, and who also had a lengthy career as California's senior Senator, including pioneering the historic 1994 automatic gun control legislation, passed away early FR 09/29/2023.

For me, Dianne Feinstein's political career was filled with extremely difficult challenges, the results of which I often did not agree. Dianne was a tough woman. Dianne Feinstein along with Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin are one of the critical and substantial reasons the Senate Judiciary Committee still maintains the asinine blue slip process.

In the Senate, a blue slip is an opinion written by a senator from the state where a federal judicial nominee resides. Both senators from a nominee's state are sent a blue slip in which they may submit a favorable or unfavorable opinion of a nominee. This blue slip process has benefited the Federalist Society by turning too many federal judgeships into a Rwing wasteland.

One of Feinstein's legacies will be the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee Study on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program.

The report details actions by CIA officials, including torturing prisoners, providing misleading or false information about classified CIA programs to the President, Department of Justice, Congress, and the media, impeding government oversight and internal criticism, and mismanaging the program. It also revealed the existence of previously unknown detainees, that more detainees were subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" (widely understood to be a euphemism for torture) than was previously disclosed, and that more techniques were used without Department of Justice approval. It concluded that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques did not yield unique intelligence that saved lives (as the CIA claimed), nor was it useful in gaining cooperation from detainees, and that the program damaged the United States' international standing.