His supporters, which included several Democrats, said Mukasey is the best prospect lawmakers are going to get in the waning months of a Bush administration unwilling to nominate anyone else. “This is the only chance we have,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.Fuck
.
How do you know, DiFi? How do you know?
Because you asked Bush, and he told you Mukasey was his best and final offer, and you believed he wasn’t lying? What’s wrong with you?
And, oh yeah, the war criminals part. Here’s the money quote, from Arlen Spector (naturally):
Mukasey has called waterboarding personally “repugnant,” and in a letter to senators said he did not know enough about how it has been used to define it as torture. He also said he thought it would be irresponsible to discuss it since doing so could make interrogators and other government officials vulnerable to lawsuits. “He felt that he could not make that pronouncement without placing people at risk to be sued or perhaps even criminally prosecuted,” said Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.So it’s come to this. We’re selecting an Attorney General because he won’t place criminals at risk of being prosecuted. The mind reels. It’s “the only chance we have” to prosecute war criminals, and DiFi just can’t have that happen. Nice work, DiFi, you and Upchuck together undercutting Leahy and Feingold. And thanks, Harry. Without you, it never could have happened. I’m proud of you. NOTE It used to be that “criminal _______ regime” was a trope on the par with “running dogs of capitalism.” Now it turns out to be the literal, balls-out truth. Same deal with “war criminal.” And here we have an Associated Press reporter and Arlen Spector saying “Yep, Mukasey can’t say what we all know, that waterboarding’s torture, because if we sayknow did it as war criminals.” And the Democrats go along with it. Beautiful plumage! This is so beyond kabuki. It’s like political hentai. UPDATE Well, whaddaya know. The Dems confirmed Mukasey in the dead of night, just like when they gutted the Fourth Amendment by passing FISA. I guess they must think nobody is watching. This morning, Carl Hulse gets it wrong. The lead:
The Senate confirmed Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general Thursday night, approving himOf course, it’s just one little word: Hulse writes “despite” when surely he meant to write “because”? See Spector and DiFi’s comments above. And, oh my goodness, why the sudden, late night vote? Greg Sargent:despitebecause Democratic criticism that he had failed to take an unequivocal stance against the torture of terrorism detainees.
One of the weirder aspects of last night’s rush vote to confirm Michael Mukasey as AG is that none of the four Senators running for President voted on this — despite the fact that his confirmation was a big issue in the Dem Primary. So what happened? So basically what happened here is that leadership was adamant that the vote take place by midnight last night. And the senators running for President, who were scattered far afield, either couldn’t make it back in time for the vote, or decided that it wasn’t worth returning. The thinking apparently was that Mukasey’s confirmation was assured, and they were already on record against him. As Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for Barack Obama, put it last night: “He’s already announced his position on it. I don’t think the vote will be close.” None of the other senators’ campaigns has commented on record about this. As for the possibility of a filibuster, it was never likely that anyone other than Dodd would have gone through with it at any rate — again, because all the Senators can say that they’re on record against him. Even if any of them had been willing to filibuster, it seems clear that the timing of the vote was such that it was unlikely that any of them could have gotten back to the Senate floor in time to do so. It still remains unclear exactly why the leadership suddenly declared at 6:30 P.M that there would be a vote — and that it would have to happen by midnight at the latest.Nice! The Democratic candidates get to go on the record without actually voting. Nice work, Harry. Now they all owe you one. Oh, and this makes passing the FISA “reform” abomination at midnight look even less like some sort of procedural trainwreck, and even more like a modus operandi, doesn’t it?
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Mukasey
Tonight I read of the articles of impeachment being forwarded to the judiciary committee.
My hopes were raised and faith in the system was being restored.
Tonight I suffered through the confirmation of Mukasey as Attorney General. My hopes were dashed and my faith in the system crushed.
There are no words to describe my feelings at this moment. I guess the closest I could come is to say that if I were near a senator tonight, I would feel that I need to take a shower. You cannot be that close to dirt without having some of it rub off.
I have been raped. I can only imagine how someone feels after such an experience but I feel that I have been raped. I did not wish any of this to be set upon me and yet those that have perpetrated this travesty stand tall and say, look what I have done for you. I have liberated you from the chains of innocense and thrust you into the world of pervision. God himself told me to do so.
Our founding fathers decided that they did not want to be under the tyrannical rule of the king and they set down a Constitution to declare and protect our freedoms. They were willing to die for their convictions. Many of them did die for their convictions.
What they fought against and died for is the same thing that is happening to us today. A holocaust survivor, after witnessing wehat is happening said, “They did the same thing in Germany.”
Ominous. Wake up and revolt people. It does not have to be a bloody revolution, just a revolution of truth.
I am so depressed!
Meme Fever - Catch It
But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!
We need a fucking attorney general, not a so-called "leader"
Well quoted on toxic leader meme, SS.
I really don’t care about Mukasey’s leadership skills—I can always check out that kind of crap in the best seller racks of airport bookstores.
I want an Attorney General who will uphold the rule of law. With Mukasey, we didn’t get one. And the Democrats negotiated with themselves and let it all happen. (Nice work, Upchuck, DiFi. I’m proud of you.) Shit, pick a moderate Republican who’s leaving office apres le deluge. Pick Olympia Snowe. Don’t let Bush get away with picking an AG where the only difference between him and Gonzales is that he’s going to “lead” the Justice
Department in the wrong fucking direction.
Gonzales job was to destroy the Justice Department.
Mukasey’s job will be to rebuild the Justice Department as an arm of the Conservative
movement—infesting it with Federalist Society operatives and Christianists and Republican moles.
I wonder how long it will take for the first fawning story about Mukasey’s extreme integritude? I give it thirty days.
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
Another nail in the coffin
“So it’s come to this.
We’re selecting an Attorney General because he won’t place criminals at risk of being prosecuted.”
Nice summation. Just another nail in the coffin of ’a nation of laws, not men.’
“Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.” - Paul Craig Roberts, last July
So Mukasey is about to become a verb
Historians will have no trouble at all putting this era in a nutshell. We will have experience 8 years (maybe more!) of the Bush/Cheney Implosion, enabled by the Crackpot Judiciary and the Bendover Congress. The great minds that brought us this far now prop Mukasey—a former judge who proved by his own testimony to be neither strong enough nor intelligent enough to administer justice under the rule of law—up as the new head of the thoroughly corrupted and demoralized JustUs Department.
Evidently, the crap is inexhaustible and unstoppable, but maybe we can at least contribute to calling things by their proper names. When someone promises (but only in private) to do the minimum required by his job description, and only if specifically directed to do so and only if the direction is not contradicted by any other command, let’s dub that person a mukasey. When someone refuses to acknowledge irrefutable facts, let’s call it mukaseying. When someone refuses to acknowledge his or her obligations or to recognize the contradictions of his or her position, let’s call that mukaseying.
Examples:
He’s just a mukasey. He won’t take a bath without a court order and his mother’s permission.
She’s just mukaseying around. She saw him drop the hammer on her toe, but she wants to pretend that it doesn’t hurt.
He mukaseyed himself into it. He promised to love both God and Mammon, and don’t you know they both showed up at the same time.
She mukaseyed the whole thing. They gave her a $5 bill to go to the store for a carton of milk, but she ran into her friends and came back broke and drunk.
Truth From The Least Expected Source:
Mukasey has called waterboarding personally “repugnant,” and in a letter to senators said he did not know enough about how it has been used to define it as torture. He also said he thought it would be irresponsible to discuss it since doing so could make interrogators and other government officials vulnerable to lawsuits.
“He felt that he could not make that pronouncement without placing people at risk to be sued or perhaps even criminally prosecuted,” said Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Emphasis, needless to say, added, since the Specter quote comes about 5 grafs from the end and about 15 from the top.
Me? A Quick Study, But A Slow Learner
As Usual, Arthur Silber is illuminating:
Can i hear an Amen?
Me? A Quick Study, But A Slow Learner
Feinstein has been a
Feinstein has been a disappointment on many occasions. Not the least of which was appearing on Charlie Rose to give a rousing denunciation of going to war with Iraq and then voting for the authorization.
I don’t understand Schumer but I get tired of his repeated press conferences where he sounds good on an issue but then nothing happens.
But comeon. John McCain said he would vote for Mukasey. 46 Republicans voted for Mukasy. 7 Dems voted for him. 40 voted against.
Nothing is going to change in this administration for the next 14 months. Isn’t it important to be laying this stuff off on the Republicans? No matter what Bush does, they continue to support him. Don’t elect them next year.
It would almost be comical to hear people like Monica Crowley criticizing the Dems because they have not succeeded in ending the Iraq War if it weren’t so insane. And if it didn’t sound like she was just taking her texts for left wing blogs.
I think we need to be thinking about the future. We need to keep the Dems feet to the fire but it is going to take a huge effort once Bush is gone to undo all that he has wrought.
Get rid of the 40 Republicans and it might be easier to deal with the 7 Dems.
Correction
Fixed. DiFi and Schumer are simply not Democrats. They are backstabbing Lieberdems. They are moles. They are on the enemy’s payroll. You cannot include them in any future calculus as being “on our side” because they are not and they will never change their ways. I don’t even care about the leadership issue. An endless succession of Lieberdem-approved Harry Reids does absolutely nothing to help us.
But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!
WASF: Schumer is the point-guy on Dem Senate Campaign Strategy
Star-shaped: Having a gop-mole in that position seems counter-productive to me.
but wtf do i know?
I think the dems are complicit w/the gops to enshrined these anti-Constitutional practices cuz they think their turn on the monkey bars is coming and wanna have the same kinda fun the gops had these last 8 years.
Me? A Quick Study, But A Slow Learner
Mukasey
Yeah, I watched it and like you, found my stomach turning over and over. I almost puked.
What I saw was another step towards the destruction of the United States as we knew it.
To confirm someone who will not say that waterboarding is torture just to cover for his “friend” in the White House is as low as it gets.
They do not have the guts to have this confirmation process during the daytime when a lot more people could be watching. Instead they use the cover of darkness to do their filthy work.
Feinstein and Schumer hopefully will have their asses handed to them in the next election. Assuming there will be another election.