And Schumer deserves it. I'm sick of Democrats issuing pseudo-lofty statements about saving the nation in order to rationalize why they continually cave to Bush. If the Democrats want to save the nation, stop caving to Bush.
On Thursday, the Senate voted by 53 to 40 to confirm Mr. Mukasey even though he would not answer a simple question: does he think waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning used to extract information from a prisoner, is torture and therefore illegal?
Democrats offer excuses for their sorry record, starting with their razor-thin majority. But it is often said that any vote in the Senate requires more than 60 votes — enough to overcome a filibuster. So why did Mr. Mukasey get by with only 53 votes? Given the success the Republicans have had in blocking action when the Democrats cannot muster 60 votes, the main culprit appears to be the Democratic leadership, which seems uninterested in or incapable of standing up to Mr. Bush.
Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat who turned the tide for this nomination, said that if the Senate did not approve Mr. Mukasey, the president would get by with an interim appointment who would be under the sway of “the extreme ideology of Vice President Dick Cheney.” He argued that Mr. Mukasey could be counted on to reverse the politicization of the Justice Department that occurred under Alberto Gonzales, and that Mr. Mukasey’s reticence about calling waterboarding illegal might well become moot, because the Senate was considering a law making clear that it is illegal.
That is precisely the sort of cozy rationalization that Mr. Schumer and his colleagues have used so many times to back down from a confrontation with Mr. Bush. The truth is, Mr. Mukasey is already in the grip of that “extreme ideology.” If he were not, he could have answered the question about waterboarding.
What makes the Democrats’ Mukasey cave-in so depressing is that it shows how far even exemplary sticklers for the law like Senators Feinstein and Schumer have lowered democracy’s bar. When they argued that Mr. Mukasey should be confirmed because he’s not as horrifying as Mr. Gonzales or as the acting attorney general who might get the job otherwise, they sounded whipped. After all these years of Bush-Cheney torture, they’ll say things they know are false just to move on.
In a Times OpEd article justifying his reluctant vote to confirm a man Dick Cheney promised would make “an outstanding attorney general,” Mr. Schumer observed that waterboarding is already “illegal under current laws and conventions.” But then he vowed to support a new bill “explicitly” making waterboarding illegal because Mr. Mukasey pledged to enforce it. Whatever. Even if Congress were to pass such legislation, Mr. Bush would veto it, and even if the veto were by some miracle overturned, Mr. Bush would void the law with a “signing statement.” That’s what he effectively did in 2005 when he signed a bill that its authors thought outlawed the torture of detainees.
That Mr. Schumer is willing to employ blatant Catch-22 illogic to pretend that Mr. Mukasey’s pledge on waterboarding has any force shows what pathetic crumbs the Democrats will settle for after all these years of being beaten down. The judges and lawyers challenging General Musharraf have more fight left in them than this.
I sure don't expect Schumer to be swayed by the anger over Mukasey in the netroots and the activist base. Maybe, just maybe, he'll listen to his hometown paper.
Late this afternoon, via Talking Points Memo, we got the news we all basically expected. Democratic Senators are caving on the nomination of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General.
Chuck Schumer (NY) and Dianne Feinstein (CA), both on the Senate Judiciary Committee, are the culprits.
It's despicable, but, unfortunately, not unexpected.
This is a big one. The issue is torture. TORTURE. Bush wants to torture. He wants another Attorney General who will let him torture. And, key Democrats just enabled him -- AGAIN.
Coincidentally, just as this news broke, I was working on a post linking to Dan Froomkin's column from today. Basically, Bush knew the Democrats would cave. THEY ALWAYS DO.
Dan Froomkin gets Bush better than most people on the Hill do.
President Bush yesterday asserted that he would never nominate anyone for attorney general who would be willing to state that waterboarding is torture -- so, if the Senate doesn't approve Michael Mukasey, "that would guarantee that America would have no attorney general during this time of war."
There is, of course, no attorney general right now because Bush's last choice spectacularly self-destructed. And many members of Bush's own party are quite comfortable stating that waterboarding is torture. It's not exactly a controversial position, seeing as waterboarding has been an iconic form of torture since the Spanish Inquisition.
But it's not Bush's style to back down, especially when a key element of his radical and unprecedented expansion of executive power is at stake. Instead, Bush has learned that the higher he ratchets up the rhetoric, especially if he can accuse his critics of being weak on terror, the more likely Congressional Democrats are to fold. He's simply counting on that happening again.
Bush who is so wrong about so many things, was right on this one. Bush knew he'd win on Mukasey.
Froomkin is so right. Bush just expected the Democrats to fold. It's a political game of chicken for him. He just made a few references to terrorism and waited. Didn't take long.
Can't wait to read the statements from Schumer and Feinstein. They'll be rife with angst. They'll talk about doing what's best for the country. Blah, blah, blah. Heard that speech from the Dems. way too many times. And, we'll hear it way too many times in the future.
The nomination of Michael Mukasey is running into very serious trouble. And, George Bush is cranky. He says it's not fair. And, guess what? Bush says we're at war. Therefore, no one can question anything Bush does and he should get what he wants:
“Judge Mukasey is not being treated fairly,” the president said, after taking the extraordinary step of inviting a group of reporters into the Oval Office to vent his feelings. Sitting behind his desk and leaning back in his chair, Mr. Bush said he was concerned that some people may have “lost sight of the fact that we’re at war.”
Pretty soon Bush will start weaving in Al Qaeda and September the 11th.
Bush just wants another Attorney General who will let him break the law. Democratic Senators are standing up against torture. And it's key that the Senators on the Judiciary Committee are lining up against Mukasey. Note to Dianne Feinstein: Don't screw this one up.
Let's all remember what happen during the confirmation hearing for Mukasey in mid-October. On the first day of testimony, Mukasey wowed the Senators. On day two, Mukasey was a different person -- he became a loyal Bushie overnight. It was an overnight transformation. Waterboarding was probably involved.
On Wednesday, during the first day of his confirmation hearings, Michael Mukasey seemed like a breath of fresh air, actually intimating that he would follow the law. But something happened to him overnight. Yesterday, Mukasey was sounding like just another Bush-bot who thinks the laws don't apply to Bush. We've had one Attorney General who thought that -- and it didn't go well:
Attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey signaled Thursday he shares the administration’s expansive view of President Bush’s authority to withhold information from Congress, skirt federal statutes and authorize harsh interrogation techniques.
The retired federal judge’s statements, during the second day of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, put him at odds with the Democrats who will decide whether Mukasey succeeds Alberto R. Gonzales as the head of the Justice Department.
What Mukasey said put him at odds with the U.S. Constitution, not just Democrats. Also, it's worse because Mukasey was a federal judge who should know better.
As usual, Russ Feingold provided some clarity:
Russ Feingold, D-Wis., told Mukasey that “it sounds like, overnight, you’ve gone from being agnostic, as you and I have gone back and forth since our first meeting on this question, to holding what is a rather disturbing view.”
So, what did happen between the time Mukasey left Capitol Hill on Wednesday and when he returned on Thursday. Team Bush probably used their own interrogation techniques to get Mukasey back on their message.
Today's NY Times editorial has some good advice for the Senators on the Judiciary Committee. Today's hearing shouldn't be a love-fest. There are major, major problems facing our system of justice. Many of those serious issues were created by Alberto Gonzales and his boss, George Bush. Gonzales is gone, but that boss remains:
Alberto Gonzales left behind a Justice Department that is not worthy of the name. Prosecutions were launched to help Republican candidates win elections. Lawyers were hired for nonpolitical jobs based on their politics and their sworn loyalty to the White House. The department — which is supposed to defend the Constitution — cheered on the Bush administration’s unconstitutional tactics in the war on terror.
Mr. Mukasey has a good reputation as a lawyer and a judge. But that is not enough. The Senate needs to know what he intends to do to set the Justice Department right. Will he lead an investigation of the still-festering United States attorneys scandal? Will he cooperate with Congressional investigators, make documents available and seek to obtain testimony from Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, who have made baseless claims of executive privilege?
How will he ensure that his staff’s loyalty is to justice, not to the president’s political team — especially since many of the top lawyers are “loyal Bushies” hired by the old regime?
Mr. Mukasey should be asked what he thinks about holding detainees indefinitely in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and denying them habeas corpus rights. He should be made to explain which interrogation techniques he considers to be torture. He should be asked what he intends to do to end illegal domestic spying programs and whether he would turn over to Congress all of the documents relating to these policies.
Mukasey should be asked those questions. More importantly, he should answer all those questions. And, he must be held accountable.
Ha. I just said someone in the Bush administration should be held accountable. That's a good one.
Well, well, well. The GOPers have been apoplectic about Iran this week. It's not quite a state secret that Cheney wants to start a war with Iran. Today, Senators Kyl and Lieberman are pushing a dangerous Senate resolution that could move the U.S. closer to a war with that country. Giuliani, McCain and Romney have been in a frenzy about Iranian's president speech at Columbia. Duncan Hunter, who is easily one of the biggest buffoons in Congress (no small feat), wants to cut all federal funding for Columbia.
For more than 25 years, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement authorities say they have suspected the New York-based Alavi Foundation is a "front" for Iranian espionage and anti-American activities.
For more than 25 years, court records show the foundation has been publicly defended and represented by the New York law firm where attorney-general nominee Michael Mukasey is a partner: Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP.
The foundation says the firm continues to represent it.
Mukasey personally handled at least one matter in court for the foundation.
Just review the rhetoric of McCain, Romney, Giuliani, Duncan Hunter and the rest of the GOP knuckleheads eviscerating Columbia University for allowing Ahmadinejad to speak one time at the school. Yet, could our next A.G. have been making money from that terrorist regime?
McCain accused Columbia of "rank hypocrisy." Let's see who the hypocrites are now. And just imagine the howls from the right wing if a Democrat had these kinds of links to an alleged Iranian "front" group.
CNN's John King's reported the "Breaking News" that there's a new leading candidate for Attorney General: Former Federal Judge Michael Mukasey. According to King, Mukasey is acceptable to some Democrats. That, of course, means the wing-nuts are freaking out. They want a fight for Ted Olson.
