Feinstein is not the only one. Joe Biden came out against it also. Yeh Joe supports Panetta at the same time he is complaining that more educated and experienced people (my interpretation) should help Obama make that choice.
Looks like Biden was just a show appointment, and Obama is going to treat him like a redheaded stepchild.
From DelawareOnline.
WASHINGTON — Vice President-elect Joe Biden said today that it was a “just a mistake” for President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team not to consult a top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee before selecting Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who will lead the committee, reportedly said she knew nothing of the selection, other than what she read in media reports.
“I’m still a Senate man,” Biden told a gaggle of reporters following his seventh swearing-in ceremony to the Senate. “I think it’s always good to talk to the requisite members of Congress. I think it was just a mistake.”
Biden defended the selection of Panetta, President Clinton’s former chief of staff, saying he is “totally qualified” as a longtime “consumer of intelligence.”
I’ve read every Grisham book, should I now ask him to step aside?
And to continue, Feinstein AND Biden are not the only ones. Feinstein opposes the Panetta selection as the incoming Intelligence Chairman; Nelson Rockefeller opposes it as the outgoing chairman. And both are liberal Democrats.
Feinstein is indicating she will play ball (which means that Obama got to her). There was never any real chance that Democrats would actually vote against Panetta. The only chance is if Republicans throw holy hell at it and people start calling their Senators worrying over our security. And I doubt if Republicans have the courage to do that now.
Panetta is a liberal Democrat and a politician. Bush took a lot of fire for “politicizing intelligence”; how does sticking a lifelong partisan liberal Democrat into the job do anything but GUARANTEE “politicized intelligence”?
Further, Panetta is not being installed to “lead” the CIA; rather, he’s there to decapitate it. Liberals have always despised the intelligence system; now is there chance to gut it once and for all.
Just remember to hold Barack Obama and his tool Panetta personally responsible for the next terrorist attack.