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You are here: Home / Schumer’s Rationale For Supporting Mukasey

Schumer’s Rationale For Supporting Mukasey

by Michael D.|  November 6, 200712:00 pm| 37 Comments

This post is in: Democratic Stupidity

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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.

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37Comments

  1. 1.

    MNPundit

    November 6, 2007 at 12:16 pm

    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.

  2. 2.

    Sojourner

    November 6, 2007 at 12:17 pm

    And we’re still supposed to care what this chicken shit thinks because…

  3. 3.

    Libby Spencer

    November 6, 2007 at 12:18 pm

    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.

  4. 4.

    Dennis-SGMM

    November 6, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    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.

  5. 5.

    Dreggas

    November 6, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    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.

  6. 6.

    tmv

    November 6, 2007 at 12:40 pm

    I see the Bush administration is now giving carte blanche to foreign governments to waterboard Americans.

    Torture for everyone!

  7. 7.

    Wilfred

    November 6, 2007 at 12:41 pm

    But aren’t Schumer, Feinstein, Specter all just being, well, pragmatic.

  8. 8.

    Zifnab

    November 6, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    And we’re still supposed to care what this chicken shit thinks because…

    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.

  9. 9.

    Dennis-SGMM

    November 6, 2007 at 12:48 pm

    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.

  10. 10.

    Thom

    November 6, 2007 at 1:11 pm

    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!

  11. 11.

    tmv

    November 6, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    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.

  12. 12.

    Dreggas

    November 6, 2007 at 1:26 pm

    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.

  13. 13.

    Zifnab

    November 6, 2007 at 1:29 pm

    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.

  14. 14.

    mrmobi

    November 6, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    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.

    Completely in agreement with you on this, Michael. And don’t be sorry.

    I still like the Kossack nominee for Attorney General: No One.

    A sensible proposal to me. Wasn’t there an acting AG? Does he have cooties, too?

  15. 15.

    S.W. Anderson

    November 6, 2007 at 1:42 pm

    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.

  16. 16.

    Wilfred

    November 6, 2007 at 1:42 pm

    No one? Well, then who’s gonna supervise important activities like this:

    “Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists

    here: http://cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=hsnews-000002620892

  17. 17.

    MNPundit

    November 6, 2007 at 1:43 pm

    Dennis-SGMM Says:

    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?

    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.

  18. 18.

    Dennis-SGMM

    November 6, 2007 at 2:04 pm

    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.

    Or selling one down the river. Too true.

  19. 19.

    Enlightened Layperson

    November 6, 2007 at 2:15 pm

    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?

    Now Hillary as President with Republicans controlling Congress . . .

  20. 20.

    Xenos

    November 6, 2007 at 2:34 pm

    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.

  21. 21.

    Zifnab

    November 6, 2007 at 2:35 pm

    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.

    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.

  22. 22.

    Xenos

    November 6, 2007 at 2:38 pm

    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.

  23. 23.

    mrmobi

    November 6, 2007 at 2:41 pm

    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.

    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?

    Or, maybe Bush appoints Federalist Society uber shyster and movement neocon Ted Olson. Or, how about David Addington or even Harriet Miers?

    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.

  24. 24.

    ImJohnGalt

    November 6, 2007 at 2:50 pm

    Bush recess-appoints Mukasey, getting his way and making the committee and the Senate look impotent anyway.

    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.

  25. 25.

    Perry Como

    November 6, 2007 at 3:06 pm

    Pardon my French, but Schumer can eat a dick.

  26. 26.

    Dreggas

    November 6, 2007 at 3:13 pm

    Xenos Says:

    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.

    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”.

  27. 27.

    Richard Braun

    November 6, 2007 at 3:15 pm

    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).

  28. 28.

    Zifnab

    November 6, 2007 at 3:16 pm

    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.

    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.

  29. 29.

    Bruce Moomaw

    November 6, 2007 at 3:34 pm

    Can we compromise by saying Mukasey is no worse than Schumer?

  30. 30.

    Zifnab

    November 6, 2007 at 3:57 pm

    Can we compromise by saying Mukasey is no worse than Schumer?

    Nonsense. The Democrats are always worse.

  31. 31.

    Abe Froman

    November 6, 2007 at 4:26 pm

    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.

  32. 32.

    cleek

    November 6, 2007 at 4:31 pm

    and then the Chimp in Chief installs a new AG on a recess appointment.

    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.

  33. 33.

    binzinerator

    November 6, 2007 at 4:58 pm

    My letter to Sen. Schumer. I am so sick of these stupid spineless bastards.

    Sen. Schumer,

    I read your op-ed, “A Vote for Justice”, in the New York Times today. It was a dishonest and disgusting defense of the indefensible.

    From your op-ed piece:
    “Most important, Judge Mukasey has demonstrated his fidelity to the rule of law, saying that if he believed the president were violating the law he would resign.”

    Beg your pardon, Senator. But a man who refuses to say whether waterboarding is torture or is illegal is NOT demonstrating his fidelity to the rule of law. In fact, he is demonstrating exactly the opposite, how he will excuse the president’s law-breaking by redefining torture as not torture, and then claiming it is not illegal.

    You said you sincerely believed Mukasey would clean up the DOJ. Someone who is already excusing Bush’s lawbreaking and corruption of justice is not going to be the one to restore the rule of law. Someone who has already supported Bush’s ludicrous and dangerous theories of a despotic-like Unitary Executive will not be the one keep the Executive separated from justice.

    You stated: “I deeply oppose this administration’s opaque policy on the use of torture — its refusal to reveal what forms of interrogation it considers acceptable. In particular, I believe that the cruel and inhumane technique of waterboarding is not only repugnant but also illegal under current laws and conventions.”

    Your words sound so strong and resolute! How wonderful! How brave! But you voted for someone who was unwilling to even utter the words “waterboarding is illegal”. And it is your vote, not your pretty empty words, that mean anything here. Your vote gave the lie to your words.

    You say you fear that if you rejected Mukasey, Bush would install someone else, a Cheney and Addington lackey. Senator, why don’t you stop fearing this deeply unpopular president and his criminal lackeys, and find your balls and spine and begin impeachment proceedings on the son of a bitch? For God’s sake, he has violated multiple felony laws on everything from spying on US citizens without warrants to ignoring due process to ordering torture to launching a pre-emptive war. He has admitted to this behavior, even bragged about it. These acts are all crimes, some even considered war crimes. Why do you continue to give such a president everything he wants?

    Do you not realize your party won the gains it did in 2006 precisely because a majority were fed up with what this president was doing and hoped — wrongly as it turned out — that people like you would do something about it?

    It was a hope and a trust people placed in the wrong men. You gave this president the means to the legal cover he was desperate for. And you insult those who once had hope for real justice by calling this travesty “a vote for justice”.

    These words in your odious op-ed made me livid at your own dishonesty and deflection of your responsibility: “But Congress is now considering — and I hope we will soon pass — a law that would explicitly ban the use of waterboarding and other abusive interrogation techniques.”

    Senator, you know damn well as I do that waterboarding is torture and it is already illegal. No one but a war criminal’s apologist insists waterboarding is not torture and is therefore not illegal.

    So don’t hand the public this nonsense that now you and congress will finally find your spines and do the right thing and ban what is already banned. Making additional laws to criminalize what is already criminalized is foolish. It undermines the meaning and authority of law, not enhances it. It is ludicrous. How many times must waterboarding be made illegal before it really becomes illegal?

    You also neglected to mention that Mukasey has supported Bush’s despotic theory of executive power. This president believes he can do what ever he wants, and Mukasey has backed that up. This president already ignores existant laws criminalizing torture, so why do you try to mislead the public with the nonsense that this president will somehow obey additional ones? Or are you really that big a fool that you think he will?

    You said you deeply opposed waterboarding. You said you wanted to restore the rule of law.

    You had your chance to show exactly what you believe about the rule of law, about torture, about justice in America, about the President being above the law.

    And you did nothing, other than make self-justifying noises later to defend what no one can honestly defend.

    Senator, what is so damn difficult about standing up to a man who insists on pretending torture is not torture?

    You have done something despicable. You have helped enable torture as an official policy of this county. You have tacitly endorsed the claim that the president is above the law. You have helped undermine some of the best things this country was founded upon.

    We know, by law, throughout history, and deep in our own consciences, that waterboarding is and always has been torture. We know what Pol Pot knew.

    Your op-ed was nothing more than P.R. spin, hoping to sound good to compensate for your shameful and cowardly abdication of your moral and legal responsibility. It was all sound bites and empty posturing. It was a disgusting justification for your lack of courage in your own principles, repackaged as blow struck for justice.

    When I read your op-ed I could not contain my contempt. We now do what Pol Pot did. And you call it “a vote for justice.” Contemptible, absolutely contemptible.

    [signed,

    real name here]

  34. 34.

    chazaroo

    November 6, 2007 at 8:06 pm

    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.

  35. 35.

    Sojourner

    November 6, 2007 at 8:32 pm

    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.

  36. 36.

    Jinchi

    November 7, 2007 at 1:15 am

    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.

  37. 37.

    Jinchi

    November 7, 2007 at 1:30 am

    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.

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