Dianne Feinstein

Big day for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on the gun-control front. First she introduced a bill to prohibit foreign felons from buying firearms; now she’s pushing a proposal to end the practice of hunting from airplanes. Co-sponsored by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the bill aims to close a loophole in the ban against aerial hunting [...]

Perhaps emboldened by a rare victory over the gun lobby last week, a group of liberal senators introduced legislation Wednesday to prevent people convicted of felonies overseas from owning firearms.
The proposal attempts to close a loophole created by a 2005 Supreme Court decision, which found that the prohibition on gun ownership applies only to felons [...]

Following up on Friday’s item about the intelligence funding bill that just cleared the Senate intelligence committee, the unclassified summary of the bill is now up on the committee’s Web page. Check out section 427:
Section 427.  Public availability of unclassified versions of certain intelligence products
Section 427 requires the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency to [...]

As promised, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) today issued his full statement explaining why he will vote not to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court justice.
After a lengthy dissertation denouncing Democrats for blocking the confirmation of previous Republican nominees, McConnell said that despite his strong belief that the president is entitled to great deference [...]

Because it’s 5 p.m. on a July Friday, the leaders of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.), have announced that the committee’s unanimously agreed on fiscal year 2010’s intelligence-funding authorization bill. (The full bill isn’t public yet.) Among its requirements is this curious provision, according to a bill summary:
Require the [...]

So we don’t know exactly what “significant actions” CIA Director Leon Panetta has acknowledged to the House intelligence committee were not properly briefed to Congress. Marc Ambinder tries to sort through the possibilities but understandably has to go a bit meta because — well, because he, like the rest of us, doesn’t know, really.
Among the [...]

As part of the war-funding deal reached yesterday between House and Senate negotiators, Detroit’s automakers found a $1 billion gift: The launch of a cash-for-clunkers program that focuses more on selling large, otherwise unwanted cars than it does on curbing greenhouse emissions, as the program was initially intended. Detroit News lays out some of the [...]

Two Democratic senators who are apparently unafraid of jailing Guantanamo detainees in civilian prisons in their states: Dianne Feinstein of California and Carl Levin of Michigan. Ali Frick of ThinkProgress and Josh Rogin of CQ report.

Just as the House Energy and Commerce Committee was passing a not-very-green cash-for-clunkers amendment to the Waxman-Markey bill, three senators introduced a rival proposal with much stronger environmental standards.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) co-sponsored a measure today that would modestly increase the “clunker” requirement of the program and significantly [...]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, which is conducting its own investigation into the CIA and torture, appeared to signal her opposition to chartering a separate commission on torture, let alone prosecution. Sticking up for her inquiry, which will wrap up within a year, she said that alongside the six [...]