Senator Dianne Feinstein — California Democrat and liberal lioness — has taken on a role that is leaving many of her allies on the left dismayed: as perhaps the most forthright and unapologetic Congressional defender of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/us/politics/feinsteins-support-for-nsa-defies-liberal-critics-and-repute.html?pagewanted=2&ref=us&_r=  “I think it’s an act of treason,” she said of the leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the N.S.A. contractor who revealed classified details about the programs, even as many liberals were hailing him as a whistle-blower. She has praised James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, who has been accused of lying to the Senate about the scope of the programs, as an honest and direct man. She supports capital punishment. She cast votes to sustain the Iraq war until its later stages and voted to confirm Bush cabinet and judicial nominees from her position on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Her support for Mr. Bush’s nominee for attorney general in 2007, Michael B. Mukasey, prompted some in the California Democratic Party to try to censure her.
She is just another victim of Stockholm syndrome on the Congressional Intelligence Committees: an enabler of government overreach who has been intoxicated by the privilege of knowing the deepest-held state secrets.
Her ardent defense of the government’s surveillance efforts has put her at odds with some Democrats on the Intelligence Committee who have called on the Obama administration to narrow the scope of the N.S.A.’s data collection efforts.