A GOOD FOLLOW-UP TO ALBERTO GONZALES-- EXPECT NO CHANGES AS SENATE DEMOCRATS DO WHAT THEY DO BEST

If you missed hearing the Senate Judiciary Committee questioning the Bush's Regime's next Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, you owe it to yourself to hunt it down. I heard a replay on NPR tonight. It was astounding. Crooks & Liars has a benevolent piece up, with Mukasey comparing the Bush Regime's torture memo (by future war crimes defendant Jay Bybee) to the Nazis. If that sounds more reasonable than something you'd expect from someone nominated for anything by Bush, rest assured-- it was straight downhill from there-- and now even Republicans are calling him unacceptable.

Probably after a threatening phone call from Cheney, he repeatedly "declined to say if he considered harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding, which simulates drowning, to constitute torture or to be illegal if used on terrorism suspects." Now that's the kind of nominee we expect from BushCo!

On the second day of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey went further than he had the day before in arguing that the White House had constitutional authority to act beyond the limits of laws enacted by Congress, especially when it came to national defense.

He suggested that both the administration’s program of eavesdropping without warrants and its use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects, including waterboarding, might be acceptable under the Constitution even if they went beyond what the law technically allowed. Mr. Mukasey said the president’s authority as commander in chief might allow him to supersede laws written by Congress.

...In the case of the eavesdropping program, Mr. Mukasey suggested that the president might have acted appropriately under his constitutional powers in ordering the surveillance without court approval even if federal law would appear to require a warrant.

Might as well end the hearings now; after statements like that, I'm sure the Democrats are frothing at the mouth to follow their Republican colleagues right down the rabbit hole. Let Feingold and Dodd vote "no," and call it a confirmation by acclimation.

My personal favorite exchange came when Mukasey refused to respond to a question about condoning torture techniques first used by the Spanish Inquisition and, until Bush, always prosecuted by the U.S., saying he wasn't going to answer questions like that just to be collegial. At that point, if Leahy has a bit more spine, he would have shut the hearings down and told Mr. 24% approval rating to tell his nominee to answer the questions or to send over a better nominee. But he doesn't and he didn't. And Mukasey will by next month, no doubt, be a fitting follow-up to the Alberto Gonzales Show.