Michael Reagan May Challenge Feinstein

One thing we can be assured of: If Michael Reagan indeed runs against Dianne Feinstein in 2012, the lamestream media will be trotting out the ballerina to bash him at every opportunity.

Two years ago, two major Republican campaigns swarmed the California GOP fall convention, confident that they could drum up the support to beat three-term incumbent Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer, who was considered vulnerable because of her low voter-approval ratings.

This year, as 1,000 GOP activists gather today in Los Angeles for their fall convention, things are different, as even the California Republican Party chairman has no idea who will take on 19-year-incumbent Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein next year - and no major candidates have stepped up.

But the landscape may change soon, analysts said, given Feinstein's recent campaign money problems and a Field Poll released today that gives one of California's most consistently popular politicians a 41 percent approval rating, the lowest of her Senate career.

One person considering a run, The Chronicle has learned, is Michael Reagan, a former conservative talk-radio host and the son of former President Ronald Reagan

Republicans may consider a challenge to Feinstein less foreboding after the survey of 1,001 registered voters found that 39 percent disapprove of Feinstein's performance and 20 percent have no opinion.

For the first time since being elected to the Senate in 1992, a plurality - 44 percent - of Field Poll respondents were "not inclined" to vote for her while 41 percent were. The margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Granted, it's nearly impossible to remove these entrenched Democrat senators in California, although Boxer did sweat it out a bit against Carly Fiorina last year. But keep in mind while Feinstein's numbers are pretty weak, Obama is also under 50% in the state. If he's facing trouble in the state come next November, a very strong possibility, Feinstein could be vulnerable. Having Michael Reagan take her out would be sweet.

Compounding Feinstein's problems is that her longtime campaign treasurer, Kinde Durkee, has been arrested on charges that she stole or misappropriated $670,000 from state Assemblyman Jose Solorio, D-Anaheim. Feinstein's $5.2 million re-election war chest may or may not be "wiped out," said her campaign consultant Bill Carrick.

Longtime GOP Congressman David Dreier, a possible casualty of redistricting, could also be a GOP possibility.

One prominent possible candidate is Rep. David Dreier, R-San Dimas (Los Angeles County), who has served in Congress since 1981. After redistricting put him in a much more competitive district, several GOP insiders suggested he might run for Senate. Dreier had $753,262 cash on hand June 30, according to federal campaign finance reports.

'Some Are Questioning Leon Panetta's Lack of Intelligence'

Is Barack Obama stepping back from Leon Panetta? Some curious statements at a media briefing this afternoon, as well as an amusing question.

Question: Some are - some are questioning Leon Panetta's lack of intelligence - lack of experience on intelligence matters. Sorry about that. I know this is tricky for you since you haven't announced it yet, but what does he bring to the table for you?

Obama: Well, as you noted, I haven't made - haven't made a formal announcement about my intelligence team.

(cell phone rings)

Obama: That may be him calling now... finding out where it's at.

Obama: I have the utmost respect for Leon Panetta. I think that he is one of the finest public servants that we have. He brings extraordinary management skills, great political savvy, an impeccable record of integrity.

As chief of staff, he is somebody who - to the president - he's somebody who obviously was fully versed in international affairs, crisis management, and had to evaluate intelligence consistently on a day-to-day basis.

Having said all that, I have not made an announcement. When we make the announcement, I think what people will see is, is that we are putting together a top-notch intelligence team that is not only going to assure that I get the best possible intelligence unvarnished, that the intelligence community is no longer geared towards telling the president what they think the president wants to hear, but instead are going to be delivering the information that the president needs to make critical decisions to keep the American people safe.

Still, one can only imagine despite criticism, an announcement is a mere formality, and it's unlikely Panetta will face much, if any, resistance.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden are defending the selection of Leon Panetta to head the CIA.

Members of Congress have voiced surprise and skepticism over the choice, but Panetta isn't expected to face serious opposition when the nomination reaches the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Among those caught by surprise yesterday was the incoming committee chairwoman, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein. After his name surfaced, she expressed skepticism about his qualifications -- as did Kit Bond, the ranking Republican on the committee.

Feinstein's office says Obama called her today and apologized for not keeping her informed on the selection.

Meanwhile, for the second day in a row, Feinstein bucks her own party.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) broke with her party’s leadership Tuesday in calling for Roland Burris to be seated in the Senate once his paperwork is signed by the Illinois secretary of state.

Feinstein, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said that not allowing Burris to be seated could broadly undermine future gubernatorial appointments.

“I can’t imagine the secretary of state countermanding a gubernatorial appointment,” Feinstein said. “The question, really, is one in my view of law. And that is, does the governor have the power to make the appointment? And the answer is yes. Is the governor discredited? And the answer is yes.

“Does that affect his appointment power? And the answer is no until certain things happen.”

She added if Burris isn’t seated “it affects gubernatorial appointments all over the country.”

Feinstein’s break with her party’s leadership is the latest headache for congressional leaders, who blocked Burris Tuesday morning from being sworn in because of the cloud surrounding Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor arrested last month on accusations of selling Barack Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder.

Hillary Plotting 2012 Strategy?

Sure could be. I floated the idea a while back suggesting she'd announce her plans to run on January 21, 2009, right after John McCain is sworn in.

And you never know considering the way The Anointed One is stumbling in the polls of late.

IT sure looked like Hillary Rodham Clinton was plotting her political future at a secret ladies-only dinner in Washington the other night.

The New York senator was guest of honor at Tuesday's hush-hush powwow that raised speculation about a possible White House run in 2012. The gathering was hosted by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and attended by Ellen Malcolm, founder of Emily's List, which supports pro-choice, female Dems; Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), chair of the New Democrat Coalition; and Hilary Rosen, former Recording Industry Association of America CEO, who's now political director of the Huffington Post.

A source tells Page Six they all met for dinner at Charlie Palmer Steak, a chophouse noted for its cellar of 10,000 bottles of wine and spectacular views of the Capitol.

"You could say Hillary met with her homegirls. They're all very powerful and important women," our insider said. "It's highly unlikely they were plotting anything around the VP spot because Hillary knows Barack Obama isn't going to pick her. They were probably planning her future."

Good timing, of course, since the group pushing an Obama-Clinton ticket has shut down.

An effort to urge Barack Obama to pick former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as his running mate is shutting down under the assumption she is not a contender for the No. 2 spot.

The two former Clinton staffers who started the group Vote Both say Obama's decision to offer Clinton a prime-time speaking role at the Democratic Party nominating convention and other signals suggest Obama will not chose her.

I think that was a foregone conclusion, and it certainly didn't help when Obama's good pal called her a bitch for the whole world to hear.

Mrs. Clinton is a political animal and will never take her humiliating primary defeat in stride. She wants revenge and there indeed will be hell to pay for those who get in her way the next time around.

As usual, she and Bill are still keeping financial secrets, which means to me they're still on the playing field.

Speculative Oil Trading

Much is still being made of futures trading in oil as being a major culprit in the rising cost of oil. Now Congress seems to be trying to respond to these concerns with legislation.

Facing complaints from price-pinched consumers, U.S. lawmakers are targeting lax futures trading rules that some critics say have given rise to a speculative bubble in oil and other commodities.

So what is it the lawmakers want to do? Well, pander to the conspiracy theorists, apparently.

Several bills have been introduced recently aimed at tightening the rules and expanding the regulations governing futures trading.

One of the flaws in the thinking (other than the fact that there are as much or more "short contracts out there than "long" contracts, thus the market is betting that prices will probably go down) is that the U.S. Congress does not control the global investment system.

Yet proposals that make it too difficult to buy and sell commodities, particularly in the largely unregulated over-the-counter market, could backfire, some economists and analysts warn.

"These are global commodities markets. If we put on too much red tape, trading will go overseas," said James Angel, a corporate finance professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, who testified on energy prices before the late June hearing.

Investors will just go buy their futures contracts elsewhere. So this is just silly. Then there is the paradox of unintended consequences:

Regulators and lawmakers have already tightened the first two loopholes, though some say not enough. The swaps exemption, however, is wide open for bills, such as those proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, that would extend limits on trading positions to pension funds and their broker-dealers.

So here we have a legislators limiting the ability of pension funds to make a profit on their investments, just as baby boomers are starting to retire in droves and putting strong pressure on the pension funds themselves to make a high return.

Brillant.

I guarantee that more regulation will not lower oil prices. An increase in supply and/or a drop in demand will cause prices to drop, nothing more and nothing less.

They Can't Run a Restaurant, So What Qualifies Them To Run Our Healthcare System?

More government incompetence.

Yes, these are the same people who want to run every aspect of your life, yet they cannot even manage their own posh eateries.

Year after year, decade upon decade, the U.S. Senate's network of restaurants has lost staggering amounts of money -- more than $18 million since 1993, according to one report, and an estimated $2 million this year alone, according to another.

The financial condition of the world's most exclusive dining hall and its affiliated Capitol Hill restaurants, cafeterias and coffee shops has become so dire that, without a $250,000 subsidy from taxpayers, the Senate won't make payroll next month.

The embarrassment of the Senate food service struggling like some neighborhood pizza joint has quietly sparked change previously unthinkable for Democrats. Last week, in a late-night voice vote, the Senate agreed to privatize the operation of its food service, a decision that would, for the first time, put it under the control of a contractor and all but guarantee lower wages and benefits for the outfit's new hires.

A late-night voice vote designed no doubt to hide this humiliation from the public.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Rules and Administrations Committee, which oversees the operation of the Senate, said she had no choice.

"It's cratering," she said of the restaurant system. "Candidly, I don't think the taxpayers should be subsidizing something that doesn't need to be. There are parts of government that can be run like a business and should be run like businesses."

Did she just say privatizing is better than losing money? Why, yes she did.

Now, why on earth do we then want to take private industries and socialize them?

More from Don Surber.

Frothing Dems Attack Feinstein

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Fugitive Clinton Donor Turns Himself In

Fugitive Norman Hsu, sugar-daddy to the Democrats, has turned himself in.

In a stunning development, the Associated Press used the word Dem in the headline.

Top Dem fundraiser turns himself in

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - A top Democratic fundraiser whose criminal past has roiled the campaigns of top presidential candidates turned himself in Friday in California, where he had been a fugitive for more than 15 years.

Judge H. James Ellis ordered Norman Hsu handcuffed and jailed on $2 million bail. The judge declined Hsu's request to immediately reduce the bail by half, instead scheduling a Sept. 5 hearing to consider the request.

Hsu pleaded no contest in 1991 to a felony count of grand theft, admitting he'd defrauded investors of $1 million in a bogus investment scam. He was facing up to three years in prison when he skipped town before his 1992 sentencing date, Deputy Attorney General Ronald Smetana said outside court.

Hsu also resigned from the board of trustees of The New School and from the board of governors of The New School's Eugene Lang College. The college received a federal appropriation secured by Clinton last year, but a spokesman for the school said Hsu was not involved in seeking money for the school.

Friday's 10-minute hearing in San Mateo County Superior Court was the culmination of a stunningly quick fall from grace for a disgraced California businessman who remade himself in New York apparel executive and benefactor of Democratic causes and candidates, including presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose campaign designated Hsu a "HillRaiser" — a title given to top donors.

Federal Election Commission records show Hsu donated $260,000 to Democratic Party groups and federal candidates since 2004. Though a top fundraiser for Clinton, he also donated to Obama's Senate campaign in 2004 and to Obama's political action committee.

After reports surfaced this week of his fugitive status, politicians at all levels scrambled to distance themselves.

Obama's campaign said Thursday it would give to charity the $2,000 Hsu contributed to his 2004 Senate campaign and the $5,000 Hsu gave to his political action committee, Hopefund.

Hsu's $43,700 in donations to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and $2,500 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also will go to charity, both groups announced.

Clinton joined the other candidates, returning $23,000 in contributions that Hsu made to her presidential and senatorial campaigns and to her political action committee, HillPac. But his close association with her campaign put Clinton on the defensive just as she prepared to ramp up for an intense post-Labor Day campaign stretch.

California officials who said they would get rid of donations from Hsu include Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and House members Mike Honda and Doris Matsui.

Earlier this week, Hsu said he thought the criminal charges had been taken care of when he completed his bankruptcy proceedings in the early 1990s.

"I have not sought to evade any of my obligations and certainly not the law," Hsu said in a prepared statement.

According to Smetana, Hsu told investors he had a contract to buy and sell latex gloves, but he never purchased the gloves and had no contract to sell them.

After he failed to show up for sentencing, investigators believed Hsu had fled to his native Hong Kong, Smetana said.

Smetana said he has agreed to let Hsu post $1 million cash bail, He also said prosecutors are likely to again argue for a prison time when Hsu finally keeps his sentencing date with the judge.

"He stole $1 million," Smetana said.

That $2 million bail could have made for a lot of dubious $2300 donations to Democrats.

Oh well.

Now instead of Democrats pretending to be magnanimous and donating Hsu's dirty money to charity, let's find out where the money came from in the first place.

The Democrats will be desperate to put this burgeoning scandal aside, and will proclaim it "old news" by next week. But they need to be held accountable and the GOP needs to remind the public of this every day between now and November 8.

Previously: The Mysterious Norman Hsu.

Left Hyperventilating over White House Emails

Another day, another game of gotcha with Karl Rove.

Hateful obsession is so unbecoming.

Several high-ranking White House officials were closely involved in crafting a public response to the uproar over the firing of a group of U.S. attorneys, according to documents released late yesterday.

Then-White House counsel Harriet E. Miers and aides to presidential adviser Karl Rove were deeply enmeshed in debates over how to respond to the controversy as early as mid-January, when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) questioned the spate of prosecutor departures in a Senate floor speech, according to e-mails that the Justice Department turned over to the House and Senate judiciary committees.

The only uproar is a media-generated witchhunt egged on by morons like Charles Schumer, a pathetic hack who could even get enough votes to take a vote on a nonbinding resolution the other day.

Memo to losers: Nobody cares about this outside of the far-left echo chamber.

If you need some laughs, there are no less than 15 of the hardcore left hatesites getting their panties in a bunch over it this morning at Memeorandum.

Shamnesty Senators Won't Give Up

They're determined to wreck this country one way or another, and clearly are not listening to the American people.

Immigration Bill Sponsors Vow to Press On

The authors of a comprehensive immigration bill said today that they would try to resuscitate the measure, which stalled Thursday when the Senate refused to cut off debate, as President Bush urged senators from both parties to bring the bill back to the floor.

"We are not giving up, we are not giving in,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who helped write the bill in months of negotiations with the White House and a small bipartisan group of senators.

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the chief Republican architect of the bill, voted against limiting debate. He said he wanted to give conservative Republicans "a little bit more time to get amendments together, to get them considered, so that we can finish the bill with an opportunity for everyone to have their say."

Yes, well we've had our say, and we want no part of this bill. Oh, and we now return to the name-calling.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat, who is a co-author of the bill, said talk show hosts were partly responsible for derailing it.

"I’ve listened to talk show hosts drumming up the opposition by using this word amnesty over and over and over again," Mrs. Feinstein said. In 15 years in the Senate, she added, "I’ve never received more hate or more racist phone calls and threats."

She provided no evidence to back up her statement.