Mukasey Is No More And No Less What Bush, Schumer And Feinstein Saddled Us With

Accountability? A little? Someday?

Michael Mukasey is Attorney General today because of the effusive support he received from Chuck Schumer. Should Schumer be held responsible? Absolutely. During the confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mukasey weaseled his way through his testimony, refusing to say, for example whether or not waterboarding was legal. That should have ended the hearings on the spot and the man should have been escorted to the door and thrown out on his ass. Instead, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senator with all the re-election money (from corporate sources), announced, along with Madam Dianne Vichyssoise (D-CA) that he would be voting for him, ensuring the futility of a battle.

The actual Senate confirmation vote itself (Nov. 8, 2007) was just political posturing. Every single Republican was in their regular rubber stamp mode-- not one voted no-- and they were joined by Lieberman and by 4 of the most consistently right-wing Democrats in the Senate-- Carper (DE), Bayh (IN), Landrieu (LA) and Nelson (NE)-- plus Schumer and Feinstein. Obama, Dodd, Biden and Clinton were all off campaigning and didn't vote.

No one can honestly claim they were buying a pig in a poke (or a cat in a sack). If someone expected an honest man or a righteous man or a man committed to Truth and Justice or who would serve the American people and the Constitution, they need to be removed from office just based on naiveté alone-- or for spending too much time listening to the rivers of bullshit that flow out of Chuck Schumer's mouth every time he opens it. Mukasey turned out to be exactly the kind of stooge Bush hired him to be and that the Senate was amply warned he would be and that, in fact, he has been.

This morning's NY Times claims there are some senators, particularly this most disingenuous of all senators, who are having buyer's remorse nine month's on.

Mukasey has dragged his ass and completely derailed the investigation into the Bush Regime's politicization of the Justice Department. There was never any question that he was hired to do exactly that. Schumer's crocodile tears are repulsive.

[A]t a hearing this month, face to face with his pick for attorney general, Mr. Schumer, a Democrat [thanks for the clarification, Eric; it does get hard to keep track in some cases], did not hide his disappointment in what he saw as Mr. Mukasey’s reluctance to move more aggressively in investigating accusations that the Justice Department had brought politically inspired prosecutions against Democratic politicians.

Mr. Schumer was still fuming a short time later as he went to the Senate floor for a vote. “That was terrible,” Mr. Schumer told a colleague privately in assessing Mr. Mukasey’s performance, an official privy to the conversation said.

...“I don’t want to use the word ‘disappointed,’ but he hasn’t provided the balance that I had hoped for,” said Mr. Specter, who supported Mr. Mukasey’s nomination.

Halfway through his term, Mr. Mukasey has defended or let stand some of the most controversial policies that he inherited from Mr. Gonzales, including the treatment of detainees, the broad surveillance powers claimed by Mr. Bush and the White House’s use of executive privilege in warding off demands from Congress for information.

Last week, Democrats charged that Mr. Mukasey was using the shield of executive privilege to “cover up” possible wrongdoing by the White House. The result, critics say, is that investigations have languished on some critical issues.

Patrick Leahy acknowledges that Mukasey is "head and shoulders above his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, but Bush would have had to look for an inmate of a federal penitentiary to find someone who wasn't. Still, Leahy, who knew what was coming and voted against Mukasey, said he is “letting the worst excesses of the Gonzales era stand... He doesn't want to rock the boat."

Neither Mukasey nor his pal Schumer-- well known as the biggest publicity whore in the Senate outside of McCain-- would agree to an interview for today's Times piece.