Sen. Feinstein's Troubles Mount

SEN. Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.

As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer design. She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world to inspect construction projects, some of which were contracted to her husband's companies, Perini Corp. and URS Corp.

Perhaps she resigned from MILCON because she could not take the heat generated by Metro's expose of her ethics (which was partially funded by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute). Or was her work on the subcommittee finished because Blum divested ownership of his military construction and advanced weapons manufacturing firms in late 2005?

The MILCON subcommittee is not only in charge of supervising military construction, it also oversees "quality of life" issues for veterans, which includes building housing for military families and operating hospitals and clinics for wounded soldiers. Perhaps Feinstein is trying to disassociate herself from MILCON's incredible failure to provide decent medical care for wounded soldiers.

Her family has profitted nicely from her work on the MILCON subcommittee, and she's been privy to the knowledge that the situation at the military's medical institutions has been going from bad to worse for years. Yet, she did nothing. Her husband's firm was providing medical equipment to the military without competitive bidding.

Others commenting on Dianne Feinstein's situation: The Jawa Report, Don Surber, and Instapundit.

UPDATE:
Ed Morrissey notes that Democrats had no trouble complaining about Halliburton's no-bid contracts, but also had no troble ignoring the no-bid contracts of her husband's companies.

During the 2006 election, Feinstein's party made a lot of hay out of non-competitve contracting by the government. Democrats railed especially about Halliburton, even though Halliburton won 95% of its contract dollars by full and open competition. Now we see that Feinstein herself had no problem with non-competitive practices, as long as it meant stuffing her own pockets with taxpayer money. Take a look at the percentages in the above. In 2005, CB Richard Ellis made $100 million in federal contracts, only half of which had been part of full and open competitive bidding.

Double standards - that's the DC shuffle for you.