Dear Senator Feinstein:

My wife and I are in receipt of your letter announcing the beginning of your campaign for re-election to the U.S. Senate. We am glad to learn that you are as troubled as we are by the ongoing (and, it seems, unending) efforts of the reactionary right to remake our country. The path on which President Bush and the Republican leadership have led our nation -- the path of war, torture, and absolutism -- is far too close to fascism for our comfort. The Republican extremists control the White House, have majorities in both houses of Congress, and with the recent passing of Chief Justice Rehnquist stand to gain two justices on the Supreme Court. In the last five years, a few people have stood up to these reactionaries' drive to erode the separation of powers, including former Vice President Gore, Senator Jeffords, Senator Byrd, and Senator Boxer. Although your voice has sometimes joined theirs, you have not always been consistent.

There have been many instances where we have been proud to have you represent our state in the Senate. For instance, we applaud your courage in voting against the nomination of John Ashcroft for Attorney General, and later Alberto Gonzales for the same position. There have also been some crucial cases where you and I disagree. Although I certainly cannot expect our elected representatives to agree with me on every issue, the three following votes were critically important for our country. First, you voted in favor of the so-called PATRIOT Act; second, you voted to authorize military force against Iraq; finally, you voted to confirm Condoleeza Rice's appointment as Secretary of State.

During the Presidential debates last year, Senator Kerry said that he voted for the PATRIOT Act; his disagreement was with how the Act had been applied. That wasn't good enough. The laws of our nation must be fair to everyone. Whether a law is fair or not should not depend on who is enforcing it. Indeed, the so-called PATRIOT Act is blatantly unconstitutional; a more accurate name would be the "Spying Without Cause Act." It violates the Second and Fourth Amendments, and may violate the Fifth and Sixth Amendments as well. Senator, the so-called PATRIOT Act is a legal monstrosity. We need laws to defend us from terrorists -- not to empower the government to spy on the people it's supposed to be protecting.

I applaud your recent work to amend Sections 213 and 505 of the PATRIOT Act to bring them more in line with Constitutional law and civil liberties. However, you have not done enough to reform Section 215. The former chief counter-terrorism officer of our nation, Richard A. Clarke, wrote that the need for the federal government to police someone's library records is so minute as to be laughable. In his book "Against All Enemies," Clarke wrote that provisions like that section give the public a multitude of good reasons to suspect their government of ill intent -- just when our people need to trust the government in order to combat terrorism. When our country's top counter-terrorism experts write that searching people's library records will not help catch terrorists, I believe them. The right to challenge orders to produce library records is a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough. The government has no right to look at someone's library records at all, and looking through library records is a waste of time that should be better spent following real leads and catching real terrorists.

Secondly, the war in Iraq has proven to be a terrible disaster. It became clear in early 2003 that President Bush intended to send the men and women of our armed forces to attack Iraq, with or without allies, and with or without UN approval. This is unacceptable under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to declare war. Although the approval Congress agreed to actually fell short of authorizing an attack -- thus calling President Bush's legal ability to wage this war into question -- Congress was wrong to go even that far.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other members of the Administration -- including then-National Security Advisor Rice -- went to tremendous effort to inflate reports of Saddam Hussein's arsenal. Enough information was available before the war began for anyone who took the trouble to inform themselves to see that Bush's claims were exaggerations. Also, Brent Scowcroft -- advisor to President Bush, senior, and co-author of his memoirs -- urged the nation not to go to war against Iraq, and focus our efforts on terrorism. That call was echoed by General Wesley Clark. Scowcroft warned that attacking Iraq would undermine the struggle against terrorists, and he has been proven right.

I would also like to call your attention to an article by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh that appeared in the May 2003 issue of the New Yorker. (Although this article was published after Bush ordered the invasion, it is the culmination of a number of articles -- too many only in the foreign press -- that called Bush's claims into question.) Mr. Hersh's article describes exactly how the Administration -- led by the Vice President and aided by Douglas Feith's office in the Pentagon -- built their case for Saddam's weapons by recasting hypothetical worst-case scenarios as proven facts and by relying on sources (such as the Iraqi defector codenamed "Curveball") that were known to be inaccurate. Then, of course, there was the bogus claim that Saddam had tried to buy uranium from Africa that Bush mentioned in his 2003 State of the Union address. President Bush blamed the CIA for this claim -- until it came out that the agency had twice taken that claim out of earlier speeches because they knew the story was based on a proven forgery.

All of the Administrations' other claims about Saddam's arsenal -- such as the aluminum tubes that were supposedly meant for nuclear weapons, even though they weren't suitable for that purpose -- were also known to be false by anyone who listened to the experts. Finally, the UN inspection team had discovered no trace of the weapons President Bush claimed Saddam was hiding. Although the inspectors' reports were good enough for our allies (and convinced them that Bush was taking our country on a fool's venture), President Bush stood steadfast in his refusal to believe the evidence. Instead, he went with his gut feeling, deciding that a defeated, impotent Saddam was somehow a threat to this country. Almost two thousand of our soldiers have died because of President Bush's arrogance.

After the war had begun, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed in his book The Price of Loyalty that President Bush and his advisors had decided -- within a month of taking office -- to take our country to war against Iraq within two years. The former head of the National Security Agency's counter-terrorism department, Richard Clarke, then wrote in "Against All Enemies" how he had fought to convince his immediate boss -- Dr. Rice -- and the other members of the Administration to take the threat from Al-Qaeda seriously. They never did. After the tragedy of September 11th, according to Clarke, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz wanted to blame Iraq for the attack -- even if Saddam Hussein was not responsible. This was confirmed in Bob Woodward's book Bush at War. Finally, David Kay's testimony and the Duelfer Report conclusively showed that Saddam not only had no weapons of mass destruction, he had no ability to make them -- confirming what the UN inspection team had said before the invasion. The war in Iraq was completely unnecessary.

Also, the President and Vice President insisted that Saddam Hussein was in league with Al Qaeda and the September 11th hijackers. This claim was also put forward by Colin Powell in his presentation to the United Nations in February 2003. Anyone who understood anything about Mideast politics knew that claim was hogwash. Al-Qaeda's stated goal was to overthrow Saddam and replace him with a Taliban-like theocracy. In pursuit of this, they had sold arms for ten years to Kurdish rebels. Even had Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, he would certainly not have given them to terrorists who were trying to kill him. (The plain fact that Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were enemies was later confirmed by CIA analyst Michael Scheuer in his book Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. I also recommend John Dean's book Worse Than Watergate.)

To sum up, the war in Iraq was launched arrogantly and recklessly by the Bush Administration. Their claims about WMD were proven exaggerations, and their claims about Iraqi ties to Al-Qaeda were obvious lies. This information was available before the war started. The fact that millions of people worldwide protested the war, before it even began, proves it. (That is why democracy is the best form of government: the people were smarter than their leaders!)

Under those circumstances, Congress was badly mistaken in granting President Bush authority to attack Iraq. Although the wording only gave President Bush that authority if Iraq posed a "continuing threat" -- which it did not -- and if Iraq was in league with the September 11th terrorists -- which it was not -- Congress should still have had more sense than to give Bush any kind of war-making authority. Not only was Bush blinded by his ideology and his hatred of Saddam, but he had already demonstrated his disregard for the Constitution and for the separation of powers. (I am referring specifically to President Bush's executive order of January 29, 2001 giving our tax money to religious charities. That latter order contradicts the separation of church and state established by the First Amendment.) I am deeply troubled that Congress, despite plenty of evidence that Bush was exaggerating about Saddam's weapons and lying about his ties to Al-Qaeda, voted to authorize Bush to take the country to war -- when it was clear that Bush wished to wage war regardless of the facts and regardless of the law.

Senator Feinstein, almost every Republican in Congress has chosen to abrogate their Constitutional authority in favor of giving this president anything he wants with a rubber stamp and a blank check. This attitude has already cost almost two thousand of our young people their lives, and must be fought. The Democrats are the opposition party, and the Democrats must oppose this war.

Finally, you voted to confirm Dr. Rice as Secretary of State. This was also a frightful misjudgment. As I cited above, as National Security Advisor, Dr. Rice ignored the warnings from her own staff about the danger Al-Qaeda posed to this country. It took the murder of almost 3,000 innocent people to make the government pay attention to its own experts -- and then the Bush Administration decided to marginalize the fight against Al-Qaeda in order to attack Iraq. In all the instances I have cited above regarding Administration exaggerations and lies leading our country into this terrible war, Dr. Rice was in the thick of things. Indeed, she is responsible for some of the worst chicanery of the entire affair. For instance, she is on record saying "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." According to Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack -- which President Bush recommended as an accurate record of events -- not only was Rice lying at the time, but she knew she was lying. All intelligence had demonstrated that Iraq had no capacity to make a nuclear weapon; the Administration's claims only concerned chemical and biological weapons. And yet you voted for her to become our current Secretary of State. I am appalled that Congress, in essence, approved this unethical and reprehensible behavior by confirming Dr. Rice's promotion. In effect, your vote endorsed the Administration's lies.

In your letter, you show that you understand the nature of the reactionary Republicans' agenda -- for they have undermined democracy at home, stifling debate and bullying their opponents. The best known example of unethical retaliation by the Bush Administration was to ruin the career of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson in order to punish her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for pointing out that the uranium-from-Africa claim was a lie. I am sure you are aware of the other ways in which the Administration has bullied Congress; your colleague Senator Byrd makes a long list in his book Losing America.

You also demonstrate an acute understanding of how the reactionary Republicans -- already in control of the White House and with an operative control of Congress -- wish to change the nature of our courts to make them obedient to the whims of President Bush. For instance, the Justice Department has taken no action to enforce the Supreme Court's decision that the inmates at Guantanamo Bay prison deserve fair trials. Also, the Senate Republican leadership has tried to remove the right to filibuster, making the Senate indeed a rubber stamp to approve President Bush's reactionary judicial nominees.

Senator, we appreciate you standing up for the rights of minorities, the rights of women, and the protection of the environment -- but you have not gone far enough. You have said on several occasions that you will make a decision on the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court based on all the evidence. Senator, we already have all the evidence we need concerning Judge Roberts. He has denied being a member of the so-called Federalist Society, when the Society's papers demonstrate he was in fact a leader. He has written that the Roe versus Wade decision was "wrongly decided." However, the majority of people in this country believe that having a politician step in and tell a doctor what he is or is not allowed to discuss with his patients would be thoroughly and fundamentally wrong. Likewise, the recent tragedy of Terri Schiavo galvanized public opinion against the idea of the government intervening in the private medical decisions of a woman and her family. Similarly, it is clear that Roberts' opposition to the Voting Rights Act and the Clean Air Act would be disastrous for our country. It would mean the end of the last legal obstacle standing in the way of the Bush Administration gutting our environmental regulations. It would curtail our rights to privacy and inhibit minorities' rights to full participation in our political process. Lastly, the Bush Administration has refused to make all of Judge Roberts' legal writings available to the Senate. This contempt for the Senate's legal obligation to "advise and consent" is enough of a reason for the Senate to withhold Roberts' confirmation.

Senator, you realized that a vote for Alberto Gonzales was a vote for torture. Likewise, a vote for Judge Roberts would be a vote to strip away a woman's privacy, and invite the government to tell her what medical procedures she may undergo -- when those decisions belong to a woman, her family, and her physician.

Senator, we appreciate your vow to insist that Roberts and other nominees uphold the Constitution, but simple insistence will not be enough. You must stand on the Senate floor and fight for a woman's right to privacy. You must exercise your vote -- and filibuster if necessary -- to stop Bush's nominees from using the Supreme Court to deny women and minorities their rights. You are absolutely correct when you note that the reactionary Republicans want to remove all checks on their power. You must fulfill your promise to ensure they do not succeed.

Senator, the time of crisis is not coming; it is upon us. The Bush Administration has already authored the torture memos, denying some detainees -- who have been convicted of no crimes -- the most fundamental right to human dignity. The Administration has already taken us to war, and as of today, 1895 of our soldiers have been killed. Not only did we have no need to go to war in Iraq, but America has lost our credibility and our moral authority. The American people did not all realize that Bush was lying in taking us to war, but the Iraqi people certainly realized it. Bush has used lofty sounding rhetoric claiming that the United States will leave Iraq when the Iraqi government is able to provide security, but this is obviously untrue, for we are building fourteen permanent military bases in that country. We are not conquerors, but thanks to the Bush Administration, that is how the Iraqis see us. Because the Iraqis know we invaded their country under false pretenses, we will not be able to defeat the insurgency, and Bush has put our troops in an impossible position.

We must end the war as quickly as humanly possible. But to the Bush Administration, opposing the war -- or wishing to bring our soldiers home -- is unpatriotic. Karl Rove has called it equivalent to betraying our country and betraying our troops. These claims are too similar to the Really Big Lies used by fascists in 1930's Germany.

Senator Byrd's book Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency is a primer on how the Bush Administration has claimed they are making our country more secure, when they have axed dozens of amendments that would do exactly that. Likewise, for the last four years, federal and local authorities had been requesting funds to re-enforce the dams outside New Orleans. The money was denied because the Administration has run up the highest deficits in history -- by cutting taxes for millionaires and by going to war in Iraq. Had the government spent our money where it was needed, more lives could have been saved and the desolation of hurricane Katrina could have been contained. In the same way, the National Guard should have been available to protect our people at home. Instead, they are dying in Iraq.

Senator, we commend you for making homeland security a top priority. We also fully support your initiative to renew the Assault Weapons Ban. With the Comprehensive Privacy Act, the Social Security Number Misuse Prevention Act, and the Military Sniper Weapon Regulation Act, you are doing exactly the right thing, and we thank you. You also have shown great courage in standing up to President Bush's absurd plan to dismantle Social Security, in fighting for the use of renewable energy, and in fighting to restore the Pell Grants. We also thank you for voting against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Senator Feinstein, we understand that in running for re-election, you must appeal to all Californians, Democrats and Republicans alike; and in representing our state in the Senate, you must likewise represent Republicans as well as Democrats. We urge you not to give in to pressure from extremists. Neither must you give in to the fear of being labeled "unpatriotic" for opposing the war in Iraq. The truth is, the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror, and the more Americans realize that, the sooner we will be able to save the lives of our troops in the Middle East by bringing them home.

For the past several years, leaders of the reactionary right have whipped up fear among voters by claiming that protecting the Constitutional separation of church and state amounts to "attacking people of faith." As a family of faith, my wife and I believe firmly that the Ten Commandments belong in church, not in courtrooms and classrooms. The Constitution exists to protect our right to worship as our consciences dictate, not as President Bush dictates. The center needs leadership that will strongly advocate common sense, just as the extremist right has strongly advocated fear.

In the same way, President Bush, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and company have fought to give government the power to spy on our people via the PATRIOT Act. The political center needs leadership who will fight to keep our library books and medical records out of the government's hands. Many Democrats have come to realize that President Bush and company have played on their fear to seize more and more power, and we firmly believe that the country's Republicans will come to understand that as well -- if a strong and courageous voice from the political center will fight extremism. Will you be that voice?

Neither Democrats nor Republicans wish the government to intervene in their private medical decisions, as President Bush and John Roberts would have it. And, regardless of one's views on gay marriage, no Republican or Democrat in this country truly wants President Bush to tell them whom they are or are not allowed to marry. Yet President Bush has used angry and divisive rhetoric to stir up people's fear, claiming that gay marriage is actually an attack on the institution of marriage as a whole, and the only people who seek equal rights are "activist judges." Senator, I know you have seen through those lies. If a leader of your prestige and caliber speaks to it, I am certain that the moderate Republicans will see through President Bush's lies as well. A same-sex couple getting married would not threaten my marriage, nor any other marriage; but this is not an issue of "activist judges" seeking to impose their will on the rest of us. It is an attempt by President Bush to seize even more power. I'm sure that the people of our country will understand that if our moderate leaders have the courage to articulate it.

Senator Feinstein, I ask you to be one of those leaders. Last year, the people of California re elected your colleague, Senator Boxer, by a wide margin; in fact, my wife and I attended Senator Boxer's re-election party. We were surprised and pleased to see you that evening! Senator Boxer had the courage to vote against the nomination of Dr. Rice to lead the State Department, and the people of California were behind her. In the same way, we will stand with you if you call for Dr. Rice's resignation.

Senator, we thank you for your work in protecting our rights against encroachment by the Bush Administration; yet you have not gone far enough. As I describe in the enclosed essay, "George W. Bush Versus the Bill of Rights," President Bush and his advisors harbor contempt for our Constitution. They seek absolute power. They despise the separation of church and state, the separation of powers, the right to due process, and the right to privacy. The evidence for this is clear, well-documented, and overwhelming. Upon taking office, every member of Congress promises to uphold the Constitution. It is the ethical duty and legal obligation of every Congressman and Senator to defend our rights and our democracy against the Bush Administration's abuses. It is outrageous that the vast majority of Republicans have fallen into line behind President Bush; it is appalling that so many Democrats have not had the courage to stand up and fight for their country.

Senator Feinstein, my wife and I will vote for you next fall, but we will do so with reluctance. I say this because, even though you and I disagree on some issues -- such the so-called PATRIOT Act and the fitness of Dr. Rice to be Secretary of State -- any Republican who replaced you would certainly add to President Bush's Senate majority, and this is plainly unacceptable. Furthermore, we applaud your efforts to protect our privacy, to protect the states' marriage laws against federal encroachment, to protect our health and our environment, and to renew the assault weapons ban.

However, you have not done enough. The Bush Presidency has been a disaster for our country -- not only because of our liberties lost at home and our loss of prestige and allies abroad, but because of the nearly two thousand of our soldiers who died in another country where we had no business going, and for no cause save the belligerence and greed of a reckless and uncaring chief executive. Senator, we ask you to do everything in your power to bring our troops home as quickly as possible. You must fight to repeal President Bush's authority to wage war in Iraq.

All Americans -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- agree that torture is wrong. Those who authorize torture (as did Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, John Ashcroft, and Donald Rumsfeld, with the full knowledge and complicity of President Bush and Vice President Cheney) must be held accountable and brought to justice.

You must demand that accountability from the executive branch. President Bush is not -- as Alberto Gonzales has written -- above the law. I ask you to demand on the Senate floor that the House impeach Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General Gonzales for the torture memos, and Secretary Rice for lying to Congress. Should their impeachment come before the Senate, you must vote for their removal. Likewise, I ask you to demand on the Senate floor that Karl Rove be fired for his part in the illegal leak of Mrs. Plame's name as a CIA agent. Finally, I ask you to demand that the House impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The President and Vice President have abused their authority for too long already.

President Bush is on record as not caring about what history will say about him. (He told Bob Woodward as much for "Plan of Attack.") Yet we already know some of what history will record. We know that this President eroded the separation of church and state. He arrested people in this country and abroad, and held them indefinitely, without proof, charge, counsel, or trial. He exaggerated intelligence about Iraq's weapons, lied about Iraq having a connection to the September 11th attacks, and started a war that killed thousands needlessly. He agreed to the torture memos. He spied on American citizens and bullied his way past the Constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.

We also already know what history will say about the Congressional elections of 2002. It will say that the Republicans all went along with President Bush's foolhardy warmongering, and the Democrats -- most of whom did not have the courage to stand up to him -- lost their majority in the Senate. The same thing must not happen in 2006.

Senator, it is the time for principle and courage. It is the time for men and women of character to stand up to President Bush. It is time for our leaders to say that we must fight terrorists in the war on terror -- not Iraqis, and not each other. It is time for our leaders to stand up for common sense: the government must never torture people. Nor does the government have any business making our medical decisions for us, or deciding who is allowed to marry whom. And people of faith do not believe in eroding the freedom of religion that has empowered our churches for over two hundred years. These are not Democratic or Republican issues; they are principles we all believe in.

Senator, we send you to Congress to be our voice -- to defend our people against the Bush Administration's encroachment of our rights and our democracy. We are not asking you to move left; we are asking you to stand up for the center.

Senator, my wife and I will vote for you -- but you must do more.

Yours sincerely,

C. Colvin