The problem with Democrats is that they will sit still for Alberto Gonzales to treat them like idiots, to lie and obstruct like this, and they won't then dial up the then-President and tell him, "Good luck getting any more nominees through the Senate for any position until you fire that asshole."
Of course, that problem continues with the tiny parliamentary reforms now before the Senate.
The Presidential election will determine whether this investigation ever goes anywhere. If McCain wins, why would his AG provide resources or back-up to Nora Dannehy.
For now, Mukasey's just trying to get his reputation back at a time when it's too late to hurt the Bushists. That's not all that's too late.
Yeah, Michael Mukasey could always waterboard the U.S. Attorneys to find out what happened under Gonzo.
But he'll never touch Karl Rove, you can take that to the bank.
Senate Democrats didn't care enough to filibuster Mukasey, so a man who can't tell whether waterboarding is torture is now nominally in charge of enforcing the law in this country, which has lost its moral bearings.
Republicans, of course, happily assented to evil with a banal face.
... is to torture prisoners and to call it something else. It's immoral, despicable, and illegal, but the Senate Judiciary Committee has acquiesced to it, when they should have exposed it in stark relief for the Constitutional crisis that it is.
I am ashamed of my government, which is nothing new, but I am also ashamed of my party, a morally equivocal shell of its former self, made to look better than Republicans only because the Republicans on the committee voted unanimously to condone evil. In favoring torture, they do have party discipline to line up and rubber-stamp whatever Duhbya wants in his infantile and unyielding manner.
Can we Democrats stop trying to make deals with those who refuse to show any good faith? Like the T1000, Duhbya can't be bargained with, he doesn't feel pity, and he will not stop.
I guess the Dems finally got good poll results on demanding that Michael Mukasey denounce waterboarding before becoming attorney general. Or maybe it was Christopher Dodd's threat to filibuster FISA and the fear that that could spread.
I don't care what got them to stand up. I only care that they are promising to. We've sunk so low that it's good news for the opposition Congressional "leaders" to demand that the nominee for AG abjure torture.
Better news would be for them to make it stick. After that, we still have a long way to go to establish again that we are a nation of laws, but it would still be progress.
Michael Mukasey will be confirmed as Attorney General. He shouldn't be, but the quailing, temporizing Democrats won't have the backbone to say what's obvious: No man who talks in newspeak about torture and who reads the Constitution in favor of Bushist power grabs deserves to be AG.
Bu-, bu-, but doesn't the President have the right to appoint who he wants to the Cabinet? NO! If he did, there would be no advice and consent clause. The Senate cannot rightly approve a man who does not believe in the Constitution.
