from sf gate's reprint of the Washington post article titled:
GOP chairman walks away as Dems decry Bush policies
Guantanamo Bay criticisms derail Patriot Act hearing
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/11/MNG59D78C81.DTLCongress created the panel in December after the release of the Sept. 11 commission report finding that the government had no one charged with monitoring civil liberties during the war on terrorism.
Dinkins is a senior partner with the law firm of Vinson and Elkins and was a deputy U.S. attorney general in 1984-85. Her biography on the Vinson and Elkins Web site does not indicate any experience in civil liberties matters. Also picked were former Solicitor General Ted Olson, whose wife, Barbara, died in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001; former Clinton White House aide Lanny Davis; Francis X. Taylor, chief security officer for General Electric Co. and former assistant secretary of state in the current administration; and Alan Charles Raul, a Washington lawyer and former official in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
Ok, so I don't know much about Tsarina Dinkins, but does anyone else find it 'uniquely American' that a man whose wife died at the hands of the terrorists, should be sitting on a panel to guarantee civil liberties in the war on terror?