Okay, LA Times. Just what kind of service are you providing your readership anymore? Isn’t tracking California’s two Senators’ votes, like, a no-brainer as one of your daily monitorings?

Isn’t having one of your home-state Democratic Senators join the GOP and become the decisive vote sending a controversial nominee — Mississippi’s Leslie Southwick, controversial over both black and gay rights, yet another white male to the all-white New Orleans 5th circuit court of appeals — on a 10-9 vote from the Judiciary to the Senate floor, igniting outrage from blacks in Congress and gays everywhere, worthy of even mention?

And meanwhile, instead, what do we have? Well, most fluffily, today, a front page flashy photo-rich story titled “In ‘08 race, a little leg may go a long way”?!?! A story of sex in politics that breaks no news and trumpets Presidential nominees and their spouses spanning eyebrow-raising age-differentials and/or baring a little flesh. (The article and multiple photos make clear that what they really want to suggest is that “a little cleavage” goes a long way but opted, oh so judiciously, for “leg”. I for one am a reader who found this reporting insulting, … worthy, at most, of the LAT’s new sultry weekly “Image” section, hardly the front page.)

That is news, but Feinstein going all Bushie on us again — and raising the ire of all of California’s black Congresspersons — isn’t?

It’s been three days. Despite the obvious date for coverage of this story having been Friday, I gave you benefit of the doubt that today’s Sunday paper might finally include coverage. Silly me.

On Thursday, Dianne Feinstein allowed herself to be the go-to woman for Sen. Trent Lott, that beacon of wisdom on racial politics, when he needed one, just one measly Democratic vote to pass through his handpacked, third-time’s-a-charm nominee for the 5th Circuit Court, Leslie Southwick (this is the seat where two prior nominees, also racially charged, went down to well-earned controversy, most famously Charles Pickering). Southwick’s nomination passed the Judiciary committee Thursday 10-9. Party line vote except: for Feinstein.

A google search shows that 59 articles have appeared on Feinstein’s vote sending Southwick’s nomination to the floor of the Senate:

First, the NY Times reported on it Friday, including these salient California-politics-rich quotations:

So when California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Thursday cast the deciding vote on the Judiciary Committee in favor of forwarding Southwick’s nomination for Senate floor consideration, she quickly drew flak — and a threat of political retribution — from California Rep. Maxine Waters, an outspoken African-American Democrat.

Waters’ threat to oppose Feinstein’s future re-election to the Senate would depend on two uncertain factors. One is that this incident is still an issue when Feinstein is next up for election in 2012, as she just won a third full term last year by a landslide margin. It also depends on Feinstein seeking re-election that year, when she will mark her 79th birthday.

Several CBC members criticized Feinstein not only for casting the offending vote, but for ignoring their pleas and declining to return their phone calls.

“If, in fact, Sen. Dianne Feinstein continues to relate to this Caucus in the way she’s been doing … We will have no alternative but to not only share the information but to fight against her coming back to the United States Senate,” Waters said.

These comments were echoed by other black Democrats in the House, including California’s Barbara Lee — who associated herself with Waters’ remarks and said, “I think the word is already getting out” — and District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who commented, “We want to say to Sen. Feinstein, ‘We shall not forget.’”

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday on her vote and the anger it has engendered, quoting the same black Congressional voices as the NYT had, and then some:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s tiebreaking vote for a controversial judicial nominee of President Bush has dismayed civil and gay rights advocates and prompted one California Democratic congresswoman to threaten to oppose any plans Feinstein has to seek re-election….

Gays and lesbians in California “are not going to be silent about this,” added Becky Dansky of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, who said Feinstein had usually been a reliable ally. Feinstein said she respected her critics but disagreed with them about Southwick.

Southwick’s opponents say his voting record in 11 years on the state court was overwhelmingly in favor of businesses and against workers and consumers, but they have largely focused on his votes as part of court majorities in two cases.

In one, the court voted to reinstate a white state employee who had been fired for calling a black co-worker a “good ol’ n-.” In the other case, the court upheld a decision to remove an 8-year-old child from her bisexual mother, in a ruling that referred to the woman’s “homosexual lifestyle.” Southwick also signed another judge’s separate opinion that described homosexuality as a choice that carries consequences.

In a statement at Thursday’s hearing, Feinstein read a letter from Southwick in which the nominee, while not disavowing his votes, said his court should have condemned the employee’s racial slur more strongly. She also noted that Southwick had received the American Bar Association’s highest evaluation for his candidacy and had taken leave from his court in 2004 to serve with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in Iraq.

“Judge Southwick is a qualified, circumspect person,” Feinstein said. “I don’t believe he’s a racist. … I believe he made a mistake” in a handful of opinions.

Her vote was condemned by some of her usual allies, including many members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who held a news conference Thursday evening. ….

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, also at the news conference, said she was “doubly disappointed that a senator from my home state, Sen. Feinstein, would vote with the Republicans to bring the Southwick nomination to the Senate floor.”

The nomination is likely to pick up enough Democratic support to win Senate confirmation in the fall, despite a plea for a filibuster from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. The organization’s vice president and policy director, Nancy Zirkin, said Friday she was “stunned and amazed” by Feinstein’s vote.

In response to her critics, Feinstein issued a statement Friday saying, “I understand the concerns that have been raised, and I respect the people who have raised them. Let me assure you, if I thought Judge Southwick was a racist or a bigot, I would not have voted to send his nomination to the full Senate.”

Papers all over the south have reported on it. Advocacy groups have reported on it, mostly angered black caucus and gay-rights groups.

And even Fox News, for heaven’s sake, has a full report on the controversies over nominee Southwick, his controversial rulings, and Feinstein’s role in advancing his nomination….and managed to do a decent job of reporting both sides.

Among the various quotations of Trent Lott in these articles, he “brags on” Feinstein and then grinningly notes that his approval would get her in trouble. There’s a whole story there, alone, in why it is that Trent Lott picked out Feinstein as his go-to vote. The Democrats on Judiciary he had to choose from were: Leahy, Kennedy, Biden, Kohl, Feinstein, Feingold, Schumer, Durbin, Cardin, and Whitehouse. Just why did Lott zero in on (and openly acknowledge courting) Dianne Feinstein as his “one shot” at getting Southwick through the Senate Judiciary? … a feat that as recently as Wednesday’s Washington Post (and, btw, also the WP’s last mention of the story, nothing since the Judiciary vote) was seen as unlikely — hence the “surprise” at Feinstein’s vote registered and quoted above. What does that say about our Senator?

Where oh where is the LA Times, Feinstein’s largest home-state paper, on this story?

Among the 59, it’s MIA.

And this comes atop the absence of any mention in LAT’s Saturday coverage of the Friday night Senate vote on surveillance of how California’s two Senators voted. The SF Chronicle, once again, managed to give their Senators’ votes for their readers. But not the LAT, all the more disconcerting because isn’t any split vote by California’s two Democratic women Senators inherently worth mention? [Actually, Boxer did not vote but it is inferable that she would have voted No]

Where oh where is the LA Times?

Too much focus on “leg” and not enough legwork, LAT. You’ve been scooped, even, again by the NYT on a story that should have been even higher priority to you than to them, and you couldn’t even print the legwork right there for the printing.

*

For more information and analysis regarding the nominee, on June 5th, the NYT editorialized on Southwick, calling him “An Unacceptable Nominee” and, in the words of their own abstract of the editorial, urged the Senate to “reject Pres Bush’s latest appeals court nominee, Leslie Southwick, and insist on more moderate nominee; says Southwick has disturbing history of insensitivity to black and other minority groups and judicial record that shows bias against workers, consumers and people injured by corporations.”

As Joe referenced below in my surveillance post/thread from yesterday, Emily Bazelon, in Slate on June 4th, summarized the reasons why Democrats were tempted to sell out and shrug their way through his nomination, and the reasons why that was not a warranted strategy for attempting to gain ‘chits’ for future Democratic nominees (Boy, are they counting chickens, especially at this rate of internal defection from a stand on principle).

The LA Times search engine since Friday has indicated no mention to date of Southwick (and their search engine supposedly accesses the past two months, which should include Southwick’s hearings back in June).