Allowing Mukasey to become Attorney General would be a symbol for the GOP that they could end W's miserable term above the law! This is the land where no one is above the law, but W's crew has avoided that quaint convention.
His team of oafish louts can't even pretend to be interested by the plights of the bottom 99% as the article "Cheney falls asleep during Cabinet meeting on wildfires." At click here describes as "During a cabinet meeting yesterday, Vice President Cheney fell asleep on camera while President Bush was discussing wildfires in California. A Cheney spokeswoman "laughed it off," telling CNN that the vice president was "practicing meditation."
This is the same v.p., president of vice who is pounding the war drums again, this time against Iran.
The article "Cheney targets Iran nuclear plan" at
http://www.miamiherald.com/519/story/279800.html
states "The United States and other nations will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday.
''Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions,'' Cheney said in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies.
He said Iran's efforts to pursue technology that would allow it to build a nuclear weapon are obvious and that ''the regime continues to practice delay and deceit in an obvious effort to buy time."
Currently "Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said striking Iran is a last resort, and the focus is now on diplomacy to stem Iran's nuclear ambitions, but ''there is more than enough reserve to respond'' militarily if need be."
Sounds like the Joint Chiefs of Staff isn't itching for another war in the Middle East, but so many military and political leaders were against attacking Iraq.
We all are distracted by failure in Iraq and threats of the same in Iran. Seems like a perfect time to shaft us all by forcing an Attorney General on us who is just as vile as the last one was.
Can the Democrats stop this?
The article "Mukasey's Nomination Runs Into Trouble" at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/25/AR2007102502003.html
states that "Judge Michael Mukasey's nomination for attorney general ran into trouble Thursday when two top Senate Democrats said their votes hinge on whether he will say on the record that an interrogation technique that simulates drowning is torture....
Separately, a Democrat familiar with the panel's deliberations said Mukasey may not get the 10 committee votes his nomination needs to be reported to the Senate floor with a favorable recommendation unless he says, in effect, that waterboarding is torture."
Some are on not sure, "But other lawmakers, like Leahy, Durbin and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said they would vote against Mukasey if he does not equate waterboarding with torture....But during terse questioning by Whitehouse, Mukasey said he did not know if waterboarding is torture because he is not familiar with how it is done. "That's a massive hedge," Whitehouse responded incredulously. "It either is or it isn't."
"If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional," Mukasey answered.
"I'm very disappointed in that answer," Whitehouse said. "I think it is purely semantic."
The editorial "The Waterboarding Dodge" at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/29/AR2007102901849.html
states "IT'S A SAD day in America when the nominee for attorney general cannot flatly declare that waterboarding is unconstitutional. The interrogation technique simulates drowning and can cause excruciating mental and physical pain; it has been prosecuted in U.S. courts since the late 1800s and was regarded by every U.S. administration before this one as torture. Yet, when asked during his confirmation hearing whether waterboarding is unconstitutional, the best that former judge Michael B. Mukasey could muster was "if waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional."
The fault for this evasion lies as much, if not more, with President Bush and Congress as it does with Mr. Mukasey. Mr. Bush authorized waterboarding in the past, most notably against al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. If Mr. Mukasey now condemns the interrogation method as unconstitutional, he would probably be in conflict with Justice Department memoranda that implicitly endorse such techniques and that have been used by CIA interrogators and others to cloak their actions in legal legitimacy. The president could also be legally implicated for approving the method."
He's not even in W's loathsome crew and he's already flaunting that we are beneath his dignity and that his words can mean whatever he wants them to.
We can't trust anything coming out of W's vile administration. The article "The Ghost of Brownie -- A fake news conference raises doubts about the 'new' FEMA." at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/29/AR2007102901832.html
states "SINCE ITS disgraceful performance during Hurricane Katrina and the shake-up that followed, the folks at the Federal Emergency Management Agency have adopted a mantra: We are a new FEMA. But the old, bumbling agency capable of breathtaking lapses in judgment reemerged last week during a "press conference" to update the "media" on FEMA's response to the wildfires in Southern California.
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