[Good liberals DiFi and Schumer throw Bush a lifeline. Nice work. Always good to see torture enabled. Leading to this kind of headline: Bush attorney general nominee gets boost. Way to go, DiFi, Chuck. I knew you could do it. I’m proud of you.]

Leahy’s going to vote No on the Mukasey nomination.

I hope this is on the grounds of Mukasey’s views on overweening executive power**, rather than merely (!!) on torture, though I congratulate the Democrats on actually managing to frame the “waterboarding” issue properly.*

Now, if we can just make sure the nomination never comes to the floor, I’d really be doing the happy dance.

I called Leahy to congratulate him; you might too:

1-202-224-4242.

* Kudos to Sheldon Whitehouse. (And take that, Lincoln Chaffee. It is always excellent to get rid of moderate Republicans.)

UPDATE ** Leahy’s statement:

“I am eager to restore strong leadership and independence to the Department of Justice,” said Leahy. “I like Michael Mukasey. I wish that I could support his nomination. But I cannot. America needs to be certain and confident of the bedrock principle — deeply embedded in our laws and our values — that no one, not even the president, is above the law.”

Well, so much for anyone Bush would nominate, then, since the essence of Movement Authoritarianism is exactly this belief. Seriously, isn’t it better to have no Attorney General, than one who believes the President [sic] is above the law? Why lend any veneer of legitimacy to Bush’s anti-Constitutional pretensions?

So, the Democrats could “advance” the nomination:

There is a way for Mukasey to get a full Senate vote even if committee Democrats are united in opposing him. The Senate Judiciary Committee could agree to advance the nomination with “no recommendation,” allowing Mukasey the chance to be confirmed by a majority of the 100-member Senate. Several vote-counters in each party said Mukasey probably would get 70 “yes” votes in such a scenario.

But why should they do that? So the Republicans have a hissy fit and David Broder clutches his pearls; so fucking what?

UPDATE Excellent background on the increasingly essential Scott Horton of Harpers:

Several days before his first meeting with the Senate Judiciary Committee, Michael Mukasey’s Justice Department handlers arranged a private meeting for him with a number of “movement conservatives.” Two different administration sources have described the meeting to me. During the meeting, Mukasey’s counterparts, largely figures associated with the Federalist Society, pushed him on two points in particular.

First, they wanted him to undertake that he would not appoint a special prosecutor to look into the U.S. attorneys scandal and related charges concerning political prosecutions. At this point it is clear that if an independent investigation were to be launched, it would quickly run head-on into some of the same figures who sat in the room with Mukasey. The email traffic which has surfaced already—and it is only a tiny fraction of the total—shows how Rove and Miers repeatedly relied upon the Federalist Society and its members to help them out in addressing recalcitrant U.S. Attorneys who would not debase their office by converting it into a political tool. Let’s be cynical [realistic] and say that the first request they put to Mukasey was designed simply to protect themselves and keep their behind-the-scenes involvement with the Justice Department’s highest profile scandal so far out of the spotlight.

And second, they pushed aggressively on the torture question. They wanted Mukasey to pledge that he would toe the Administration’s line on “the Program,” that he would continue to protect those who authored the program with the cloak of an Attorney General opinion keeping them safe from prosecution.

Again, better no Attorney General than an Attorney General who would give either Bush using the criminal justice system to affect election outcomes, or who would legitimize the United States as a nation of torturers.

And now some excellent analysis on why torture really is at the dark heart of the matter (not just “framing,” as I put it above:

But the torture litmus test is new, and it seems to be key for lawyers. It really is an exercise in Kool Aid drinking. If you’re prepared to hedge on whether waterboarding is torture, then you might be counted upon to do anything.

It’s just like passing an initiation test into a gang, isn’t it?

Indeed, there is no question about it. Waterboarding is torture and has been understood to be torture in a formal sense for over a hundred years. Soldiers who used it were court-martialed, and the attempted defense of military necessity was smacked down by the Army’s Judge Advocate General in 1903. There is no shortage of other precedent. This is why Mukasey’s dodge on the issue—first a very primitive dodge, and then a more sophisticated one—is so troubling.

Well, of course Bush wants an Attorney General who will “do anything.” Just like Gonzo, eh?

Horton quotes Balkin:

The Bush Admininstration will not nominate anyone to be Attorney General who will state publicly that what the Administration did was illegal or dishonorable. That means that the only persons who can be nominated are those who are willing to be complicit in its illegality and dishonor.

Bingo. No Attorney General is better than any Attorney General Bush can nominate.

No wonder Bush is pleading. Please, can we make him plead some more?