Mukasey would simply quash all investigations and refuse to appoint a Special Counsel. If the furor of the US populace became such that a Special Counsel was appointed and the House impeached W and the Senate held an impeachment trial, then W would appeal it. That is when W's stacked US Supreme Court would destroy our legal system because Alito would say that the AUMF gave W "unitary executive" powers to do whatever he wanted.

::::::::

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."

His pupil, "king bubble boy the 1st" put it "I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

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.

Turns out the people whom FEMA deputy administrator Harvey E. Johnson Jr. called on for softball questions about the agency's handling of the first major disaster since Katrina were -- as Post writer Al Kamen first reported -- FEMA employees. The real reporters, who couldn't get to the news conference because it had been called 15 minutes before it started, telephoned in but were allowed only to listen. No questions. This is outlandish on so many levels, we don't know where to begin."

This has been a wide spread ploy by Rove's propaganda machine as the article "Video news releases" at
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Video_news_releases
states "Video news releases or VNRs (also referred to as fake TV news) are segments designed to be indistinguishable from independently-produced news reports that are distributed and promoted to television newsrooms. TV stations incorporate VNRs into their newscasts, rarely alerting viewers to the source of the footage."

Remember when W had the conference with our soldiers in which the soldiers were provided with the questions to ask big bro 43 and they rehearsed them so that the propaganda would flow well?

They phony up the news with VNRs and they provide immunity to criminals. Why don't we think we are living in a totalitarian state?

The article "Immunity Jeopardizes Iraq Probe –- Guards' Statements Cannot Be Used in Blackwater Case" at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/29/AR2007102901266.html
states "Potential prosecution of Blackwater guards allegedly involved in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians last month may have been compromised because the guards received immunity for statements they made to State Department officials investigating the incident, federal law enforcement officials said yesterday.

FBI agents called in to take over the State Department's investigation two weeks after the Sept. 16 shootings cannot use any information gleaned during questioning of the guards by the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which is charged with supervising security contractors."

You might think big deal -- it is their first mistake like this, but you'd be wrong as "The proposal marks the second time in recent years that Congress has moved toward providing legal immunity for past actions that may have been illegal. The Military Commissions Act, passed by a GOP-led Congress in September 2006, provided retroactive immunity for CIA interrogators who could have been accused of war crimes for mistreating detainees."

The Democrats are dealing with this Mukasey hypocrisy, immunity for mercenaries who provide kickbacks for big bro 43, a plan by Cheney to attack Iran and also with W's illegal NSA eavesdropping on US citizens.

The article "Immunity for Telecoms May Set Bad Precedent, Legal Scholars Say -- Retroactive Protection Could Create Problems in the Future" at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/21/AR2007102101041.html
considers that in the past the GOP cooperated with Democrats when they committed crimes. Now they don't as "But last week, faced with admissions by several telecommunication companies that they assisted the Bush administration in warrantless spying on Americans, leaders of the Senate intelligence committee took a much different tack -- proposing legislation that would grant those companies retroactive immunity from prosecution or lawsuits.

The proposal marks the second time in recent years that Congress has moved toward providing legal immunity for past actions that may have been illegal. The Military Commissions Act, passed by a GOP-led Congress in September 2006, provided retroactive immunity for CIA interrogators who could have been accused of war crimes for mistreating detainees.
Legal experts say the granting of such retroactive immunity by Congress is unusual, particularly in a case involving private companies. Congress on only a few occasions has given some forms of immunity to law enforcement officers, intelligence officials and others within the government, or to some of its contractors, experts said. In 2005, Congress also approved a law granting firearms manufacturers immunity from lawsuits by victims of gun violence.

"It's particularly unusual in the case of the telecoms because you don't really know what you're immunizing," said Louis Fisher, a specialist in constitutional law with the Law Library of the Library of Congress. "You don't know what you're cleaning up."

The GOP is unrepentant and the Democrats only have a slim majority "But civil liberties groups and many academics argue that Congress is allowing the government to cover up possible wrongdoing and is inappropriately interfering in disputes that the courts should decide. The American Civil Liberties Union has campaigned against the proposed Senate legislation, saying in a news release Friday that "the administration is trying to cover its tracks."

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said in a statement last week that classified documents provided by the White House "further demonstrate that the program was illegal and that there is no basis for granting retroactive immunity to those who allegedly cooperated."

Retired Rear Adm. John Hutson, dean and president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., said he is concerned about the precedent that a new immunity provision might set. "The unfortunate reality is that once you've done it, once you immunize interrogators or phone companies, then it's easy to do it again in another context," Hutson said. "It seems to me that as a general rule, retroactive immunity is not a good thing. . . . It's essentially letting Congress handle something that should be handled by the judiciary."

Immunity for what? These GOP goons are hiding material that the Democrats and the public need to know in order to understand the nefarious plans W has for dismantling our civil rights.

Last, but not least regarding Mukasey, he's an adherent to the "unitary executive" powers that Alito helped Reagan institute in the 80s.

The article "How confirming Michael Mukasey will further cripple Congress." at
http://www.slate.com/id/2176401/pagenum/all/#page_start
said his views on torture are torturous and bar him from the job and further states "Judge Mukasey's views on presidential power are also disqualifying. When asked about the secret surveillance program authorized by President Bush in plain violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, he responded that the Constitution authorizes the president to ignore or disobey statutory law when he thinks it necessary "to defend the country." When Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked whether the president could authorize illegal conduct his response was this lawyerly formulation:
The only way for me to respond to that in the abstract is to say that if by illegal you mean contrary to a statute, but within the authority of the president to defend the country, the president is not putting somebody above the law; the president is putting somebody within the law. Can the president put somebody above the law? No. The president doesn't stand above the law. But the law emphatically includes the Constitution. It starts with the Constitution.

This expansive view of presidential war powers is nowhere to be found in the text of the Constitution, which provides only that the president "shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into service of the United States." It also requires an almost willful misconstruction of Supreme Court precedent. While the boundaries between presidential and congressional authority in wartime are sometimes ambiguous, two points are plain. First, the court is tolerant of presidential assertions of extraordinary war powers in cases of genuine emergency where there is no time to seek congressional authorization. Second, in the language of the famous Youngstown case, when a president acts against the express will of Congress, "his power is at its lowest ebb" and the court can uphold the president "only by disabling the Congress from acting on the subject."

It concludes "If a nominee for attorney general, however smart, sincere, and capable, refuses to disavow torture and espouses an anti-democratic, anti-constitutional doctrine of presidential hegemony and congressional subservience, he should be rejected. If the Senate is foolish enough to ratify the replacement of a bumbling toady with an accomplished apostle of the gospel of executive supremacy, it will deserve every snub this and future presidents inflict. But the rest of us deserve better."

To big bro 43 words mean whatever he says they mean. His administration is thoroughly corrupt and he has placed goons on the US Supreme Court that go along with "unitary executive" powers and signing statements. We got rid of one toady as Attorney General. Are we going to allow another nominee, who isn't in league with W as Gonzales, but clearly has right-wing extremist leanings, to be into place for W's last year plus? Let's hope we can do better than Mukasey.

Just imagine him being in place and the House requests a Special Counsel to gather evidence for an impeachment of W. What would happen? There wouldn't be a contemporary version of the "Saturday Night Massacre". Back in his final days "Tricky Dick" performed an executive dismissal of independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox. That was followed by the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus.

Mukasey would simply quash all investigations and refuse to appoint a Special Counsel. Remember then Attorney General Ashcroft recused himself from the investigation of "Plamegate". Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, acting as Attorney General in Ashcroft's place, appointed Fitzgerald to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel in charge of the investigation.

If the furor of the US populace became such that a Special Counsel was appointed and the House impeached W and the Senate held an impeachment trial, then W would appeal it. That is when W's stacked US Supreme Court would destroy our legal system because Alito would say that the AUMF gave W "unitary executive" powers to do whatever he wanted, thus proving that words have no meaning.

Authors Bio:
Winston Smith is an ex-Social Worker. I worked in child welfare, and in medical settings and in homeless settings. In the later our facility was geared as a permanent address for people to apply for welfare. Once they received that we could send them to facilities in which their welfare paid the bill and provided enough for a meager existence. We also referred people to vocational rehabilitation services. Many of the people who came to us were people who were clearly emotionally ill, but Reagan's slashing of the services for these people caused them to become homeless. One woman I dealt with-St. Jane, believed she was in direct communication with God, urinated freely without using the facilities and she had 47 bags of trash which were prized possessions. She got welfare and was sent to a facility were she could survive. The rule was that our facility could be used 1 time only as we had too many people who thought that the services that we provided we would lift them from the dire straights that they were in. Well, we provided our services for St. Jane around Thanksgiving. On Christmas Eve she was back with her 47 bags of trash and wanted to stay at our facility. I informed my superior of this situation, but we declined to provide services for St. Jane. She slept in front of our facility in a snowstorm. The local rag took the picture and excoriated us for what we did. The local welfare department asked her where she would like to live. St. Jane said Chicago because she liked the wind. She knew on one there. She and her 47 bags of trash of were carted onto a train for the windy city and never of again. The local welfare department was glad to get shed of her. Social welfare in the mid-1980's was geared to blame the victim. Ill people were sent home from hospitals were no one was going to help them because social welfare budgets were slashed by Reagan. Bush 41's â"thousand points of lightâ" was just another way to shaft the weakest in our society. Bush 43's faith based initiative was just another attempt to reduce social welfare services. Reagan's â"Just say Noâ" was the pinnacle of hypocrisy. No services for those who desperately needed them under the guise of tough love.

Obviously I became burnt out by too much indifference regarding our weak and weary. I couldn't look at desperate people and could not get myself to say that what I could offer them wouldn't really help themâ"”it would only get them out of my office to be another person's problem, until the local welfare department carted them away.

I had little interest in politics until the illegal Iraq War started. Growing up in the 1960's caused me to understand that the GOP used war to attract right-wing extremists to vote for them. When â"Tricky Dick'sâ" secret plan to end the Vietnam War unfolded into elongating our presence there for 8 years I knew that I would never believe a GOP war-monger again. I dislike Obama's plan to escalate our presence in Afghanistan and see it as a craven attempt to placate the GOP. Maybe he'll reduce the GOP's attacks against him, but it will at the expense of alienating his base.