Cheap shots and pink helicopters

Authenticated photo of the unmanned aerial surveillance vehicle outside Senator Dianne Feinstein's house, June 15 2013. Image from Demotix.

We've previously noted how Senator Feinstein (R–Military-Industrial Complex) had a strange, not to say psychedelic, encounter, last summer, with an overly friendly airborne robot:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein says she once found a drone peeking into the window of her home — the kind of cautionary tale she wants lawmakers to consider as they look at allowing commercial drone use.... Feinstein said she encountered the flying robot while a demonstration was taking place outside her house. She said she went to the window to peek out — and “there was a drone right there at the window looking out at me.” (Politico)

It now seems, as Politico is (not exactly) reporting, that it was only the first blow in the Senator's war with the Central Intelligence Agency, and we have sourced some pictures of the incident here:

Cheap shots: Cries and whiskers

"Like a Surgeon"

Dana Loesch: 'Imagine if Madonna's name was Phil Robertson' http://t.co/h5nG14PPHy
— TwitchyTeam (@TwitchyTeam) January 18, 2014

And imagine if Dana Loesch's name was Donatien-Alphonse-François de Sade. That would explain why she thinks a penis is indistinguishable from a vaginal probe wand.

And much much more below the fold!

Playas

This is really kind of cool:

This week, J Street is expected to land one of its biggest names when it announces its endorsement of Senator Dianne Feinstein, the veteran Democrat from California who sits on the Senate intelligence committee, an important forum for Middle East intelligence. With Ms. Feinstein’s acceptance of J Street’s endorsement, the group’s PAC plans to raise at least $100,000 in support of her re-election bid, the officials said.

Founded in 2008, J Street’s political action committee is on pace to set a fund-raising record this election. By November, it expects to raise nearly $2 million in support of more than 60 [all Democratic] Congressional candidates whose views on Israel are aligned with its own, said Alexandra Stanton, a co-chairwoman of the PAC, and she said it had tapped into pro-Israel donors who had no real political outlet before now.

J Street's passionate moderation on Israel and the two-state solution does not exactly reflect my views, which are more at the Peace Now end of the spectrum,  but it's heartening that any kind of non-hawk standpoint is rising at this time when the discourse in Israel itself seems to have gotten so badly lost.