Make of it what you will. One quote sticks out for me:
My colleagues who oppose his confirmation have gone out of their way to praise his character and qualifications. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, for one, commended Judge Mukasey as “a brilliant lawyer, a distinguished jurist and by all accounts a good man.”
I’m sorry. If you can’t look me in the eye and tell me waterboarding is torture, then I could never think of you as a good man.
MNPundit
I could probably parse this statement in a really disgusting display of hackery, but I won’t.
I will say however that this is not unheard of. Say, someone has committed a murder. Before the actual murder they were considered good people and aside from the actual murder are still considered good people by those who know them.
But I don’t know Mukasey very well so I don’t think he’s a very good man.
Sojourner
And we’re still supposed to care what this chicken shit thinks because…
Libby Spencer
They say that about all the nominees, it’s never true and Schumer is a use-less tool.
OT and totally unrelated but I’m posting it here because the Kentucky thread has dropped down. The latest in GOP sliming — fake robo calls pretending to be an endorsement from a gay rights org.
Dennis-SGMM
Voting is becoming a real quandary for me. Should I vote for the Fascist Shitheads or for the Spineless Wimps?
It occurs to me to wonder how good the Dems would be at protecting our freedoms under President Hillary Clinton. If they can’t stand up to Bush what makes anyone think that they’d stand up to a president elected from their own party?
Before you HRC supporters reply that we wouldn’t need to have our freedoms protected from Hillary let me remind you that she’s yet to tell us which of the Constitutionally-questionable powers that Bush has arrogated to the presidency would be given up by a Clinton administration. I don’t want Congress to roll over for any President.
Dreggas
Schumers a dipshit and so is swinestein. I am only disappointed that I didn’t have another dem to vote for who was challenging swinestein. Mukasey sat right there and said “I’m abu gonzales but I’m white” and they gave him a pass just like they did gonzales the first time around.
Absolutely disgusting.
tmv
I see the Bush administration is now giving carte blanche to foreign governments to waterboard Americans.
Torture for everyone!
Wilfred
But aren’t Schumer, Feinstein, Specter all just being, well, pragmatic.
Zifnab
He’s the deciding vote for Mukasey getting out of committee.
Remember when the committee was the place where nominations and bills a few people didn’t like went to die? I miss those days. Now its just one giant rubber stamp.
Dennis-SGMM
tmv Says:
I see the Bush administration is now giving carte blanche to foreign governments to waterboard Americans.
Torture for everyone!
So, it’s more important for Bushco to be able to torture than it is for Americans to not be tortured.
In other words: George W. Bush just threw the rest of us under a bus.
Thom
A good man? Who gives a fuck about that? could you think of him as a cop? How abot the Top Cop in the U.S.? Woo hoo!
tmv
As much as it pains me to say it, they probably are being pragmatic.
Ashcroft was a better attorney general than Gonzales. And I never thought I could put Ashcroft in any kind of positive sentence.
Th Bush crowd is never going to nominate an actual good attorney general, and the guy in there now is both useless and a hack.
Dreggas
With all of this I wonder if these fuckers realize there are people outside of Washington. I really am beginning to believe that they live in the belief that nothing they do affects them so they can be feckless all they want.
It’s only when they want to score a point or two that they reach out, grab some poor schmuck, hold him or her up and say “see” but just as quickly toss him or her aside.
Zifnab
I still like the Kossack nominee for Attorney General: No One. It’s not like Gonzo did his fucking job anyway, so why fool around? Sure, it would take some balls to get this done, but much like the initiative to de-fund the office of Vice President (since he’s not really in the executive branch anyway, right?) nullifying the office of the Attorney General when the AG refuses to do his job seems like the sanest thing to do. If Bush wants to throw a giant stink, let him. Every time the chimp opens his mouth, his poll numbers drop, and no one who’s been keeping up with the news would be confused as to why the office is being left vacant.
Nominating Mukasey, just like pushing through the FISA bill and passing war funding, is just an underhanded way of giving Bush a pass on the whole mess.
mrmobi
Completely in agreement with you on this, Michael. And don’t be sorry.
A sensible proposal to me. Wasn’t there an acting AG? Does he have cooties, too?
S.W. Anderson
I don’t like Mukasey’s inability/unwillingness to come out with a flat statement waterboarding is torture and illegal, either. I’m disgusted on every level about my country torturing captives.
That said, a senator sitting on the Judiciary Committee has to evaluate the whole situation and either cast a vote or abstain. IMO, abstaining would really be the coward’s way out.
Us keyboard commandos can take all-or-nothing, no-holds barred, screw-the-consequences positions and feel wonderfully pure and superior doing so. Damn the F-ing wimps to the deepest pit in hell and pour kerosene in after them.
Schumer and Feinstein don’t have that luxury. They have to ask: “OK, so we kill Mukasey’s nomination. Then what?”
Then in a few weeks, Bush recess-appoints Mukasey, getting his way and making the committee and the Senate look impotent anyway. Or, maybe Bush appoints Federalist Society uber shyster and movement neocon Ted Olson. Or, how about David Addington or even Harriet Miers?
Don’t think so? Remember how John Bolton wound up at the U.N. in spite of the Senate giving him thumbs down.
Face it, it’s Bush’s last year. He can’t run again. As usual, he’s in the catbird seat, liberated to do his worst and in a good position to get away with whatever that is.
For now, anyway.
But Bush won’t always be president and his handpicked A.G. won’t always be able to jigger laws and maybe look the other way for him. Truth has a way of coming out. If torture has been and is being carried out, word will get out — and Bush, Cheney and the rest could end up being prosecuted. I expect Schumer, Feinstein and the rest of Judiciary Committee Democrats have that in mind.
Wilfred
No one? Well, then who’s gonna supervise important activities like this:
here: http://cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=hsnews-000002620892
MNPundit
Don’t be silly. Hillary is a Democrat. Congressional leaders are democrats. If there’s one thing any Democrat has never been shy about it’s fighting a fellow Democrat.
Dennis-SGMM
Or selling one down the river. Too true.
Enlightened Layperson
Now Hillary as President with Republicans controlling Congress . . .
Xenos
My guess is that Schumer, knowing Mukasey and trusting him, has been promised by Mukasey that the DOJ will not be used to undermine the election of 2008. As long as there is a fair election, the crooks and torturers in the executive branch will get dealt with in the next administration.
Zifnab
That’s a whooooooooole lot of wishful thinking. My guess is that Schumer is up for re-election next year, and he doesn’t want “Senator hand selects AG and then votes him down” being used against him in ’08.
Xenos
what, you think a republican might win a senate seat from New York? In 2008?
I may be engaged in wishful thinking, but there is no way Schumer could lose his seat because he turned on Mukasey.
mrmobi
Well, S.W., I hope you are right.
However, I find very worrisome these plans to bomb Iran, contingency plans to cancel elections because of a terrorist attack, etc., not to mention assembling and then attaching nuclear-tipped cruise missles to a B-52 and flying them cross-country (the only time that has ever happened), etc. All a mistake, don’t ya know?
What worries me most is whether our courageous and principled Democratic Representatives and Senators would acquire the necessary cojones to check Mr. McFlightsuit should he completely go off the rails and declare martial law, know what I mean?
Now you’re talking, give me Addington! He may be a neo-
nazicon, but at least he can form a thought. Better that Americans see what this administration stands for, that is, kidnapping and torture. Bolton was/is a joke, and served to show how completely out of touch and dangerous these guys are.I’m with Zifnab, NO ONE for AG.
ImJohnGalt
Mebbe this is finally important enough for Harry Reid to do what he threatened and make sure that Congress never sits idle long enough for a recess appointment to be possible.
Perry Como
Pardon my French, but Schumer can eat a dick.
Dreggas
No, but I bet a dem running against him might take his seat if that dem ran on the platform of “Schumer supported AG nominee who supported waterboarding”.
Richard Braun
Schumer is a turd and New Yorkers are going to remember this betrayal of human rights principle. I’m your standard straight Dem-line voter, with one exception. Whenever this boob runs for office, his lever stays where it is. That’s about my only solace after his latest travesty. And Feinstein be damned, along with New York’s worthless excuse for a senior senator (who deserves some waterboarding himself).
Zifnab
Pipe dream. If Schumer doesn’t have the balls to shoot down Mukasey as a nominee, Reid and the Dems wouldn’t have the stones to handle blocking a Bush recess appointment.
Bruce Moomaw
Can we compromise by saying Mukasey is no worse than Schumer?
Zifnab
Nonsense. The Democrats are always worse.
Abe Froman
Food for thought. What if they vote no on Mukasey and then the Chimp in Chief installs a new AG on a recess appointment. Someone who is much worse then Mukasey Heard it on Oberman last night, thought i’d through it out to the group.
cleek
maybe that’d get Pelosi agitated enough to put impeachment back on the table!
nah, who’m i kiddin?
if Bush did that, the Dems would talk themselves into giving him another $60B for his war, just to make up for the trouble they put him through with that whole AG thing.
binzinerator
My letter to Sen. Schumer. I am so sick of these stupid spineless bastards.
chazaroo
In seven short years these fascist cocksuckers have turned the U.S. into a fourth rate country. This is a new low that I hope will be remembered for a long time. schumer and difi are both pathetic cunts.
Sojourner
I have been the first to bash the Dems for their cowardice but after a bizarre conversation at work, I am reconsidering. The problem is us, the American people, who refuse to pay attention to what’s going on.
I work for a company that appears to employ a significant number of the 20+ percenters who still support the Bush administration. Typically, I do not discuss politics with my Republican friends because I like them as people and don’t want to hear any bullshit from them that would cause me to have to reconsider my friendship.
But a couple of folks at work provoked me one day so I responded in kind by stating the obvious: the Bush administration is guilty of torture. I then asked them if they, too, supported torture.
Well, all hell broke loose. They absolutely denied that our Dear Leader was guilty of any such thing.
Stunned, I didn’t know what to do. So I burst out laughing, which, of course, pissed them off even more.
So why should the Dems demonstrate moral courage when the American public chooses to cover its eyes? Yes, the majority are disgusted with this administration but…
If you were asked 10 years ago, how the American public would respond if we had an administration that routinely practiced torture, outed covert CIA agents, and considered themselves above the law (signing statements, etc.) what would you have expected the public response to be?
I would have predicted huge outrage and revulsion.
What have we seen? Only the occasional murmur.
We have the political representation we deserve.
Jinchi
I’m sorry. If you can’t look me in the eye and tell me waterboarding is torture, then I could never think of you as a good man.
Let’s remember that they also praised Alberto Gonzales as the “Real Deal” when he went up for the nomination. He was supposed to be proof that Latinos had come of age in America.
I don’t understand this need to praise people who are lying to their faces, but it seems to be a habit of Democratic Senators.
Jinchi
What if they vote no on Mukasey and then the Chimp in Chief installs a new AG on a recess appointment. Someone who is much worse then Mukasey
Why would they have bothered driving Gonzales out in the first place if they were worried about that? Bush could’ve always threatened to replace him with Tim Griffin and if they didn’t rubber stamp him, he could have threatened to recess appoint Karl Rove.
The Senate can’t work like that. They need to guard their own authority, jealously. That’s the only way the system of checks and balances works.