Barack Obama Gets a Warning from Dianne Feinstein*

If there is one constant in the US Senate, it is that Dianne Feinstein is friendly to an expansive and intrusive state security apparatus.

Thus her signing onto letter to Obama suggesting that his allowing the force feeding of prisoners at Guantanamo is illegal is a big deal:

Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin sent Obama a letter yesterday, using Kessler’s [The Federal Judge who condemned the force feeding, but said that she had no standing to rule] ruling to connect the two explicitly.

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Gladys Kessler also expressed concern about the force-feeding of Guantanamo Bay detainees. The Court denied detainee Jihad Dhiab’s motion for a preliminary injunction to stop force-feeding due to lack of jurisdiction, but in her order, Judge Kessler noted that Dhiab has set out in great detail in his court filings “what appears to be a consensus that force-feeding of prisoners violates Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which prohibits torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.” The United States has ratified the ICCPR and is obligated to comply with its provisions. Judge Kessler also wrote, “it is perfectly clear from the statements of detainees, as well as the statements from the [medical] organizations just cited, that force-feeding is a painful, humiliating, and degrading process.” (emphasis added).

The judge concluded by correctly pointing out that you, as Commander in Chief, have the authority to intercede on behalf of Dhiab, and other similarly-situated detainees at Guantanamo. The court wrote: “Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that ‘[t]he President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. …’ It would seem to follow, therefore, that the President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority—and power—to directly address the issue of force-feeding of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.”

Feinstein only by association makes the next part of her argument. We comply with these treaties by complying with our Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel or unusual punishment. And the government has long said that if we can do something elsewhere in a our gulag system, we can do it in Gitmo.

………

Say what you will about DiFi (lord knows I’ve often said the same, where I thought it appropriate), but she has just told a President from her own party that he’s breaking the law.

This is what you call a, "statement against interests."

When DiFi is implying that your intelligence activities are over the top, you have jumped the shark.

I would also note that the Snowden matter might very have something to do with this, she also sent a letter expressing concerns to SecDef Hagel about a month ago (about a week and a half after the Snowden revelations).

The US state security apparatus still thinks that this will blow over, but even DiFi realizes that something has changed.

^*Full disclosure, her grandfather, Sam Goldman, and my great-grandfather, Harry Goldman, were brothers.