Something's wrong with this picture, as Senator Dianne Feinstein has for many years routinely ignored her own conflicts of interest. She was Chair of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee from 2001-05, and she voted in favor of contracts worth billions to companies owned or largely controlled by her husband.
And this is who's in charge of the Democrat effort to restore ethics to Congress? In the words of a famous Democrat, it all comes down to what the meaning of the word "is" is.
In her annual Public Financial Disclosure Reports, Feinstein records a sizeable family income from large investments in Perini, which is based in Framingham, Mass., and in URS, headquartered in San Francisco. But she has not publicly acknowledged the conflict of interest between her job as a congressional appropriator and her husband's longtime control of Perini and URS--and that omission has called her ethical standards into question, say the experts.