The New York Times
Okay, so Mukasey's the best we can hope for out of this lawless administration, the acting attorney-general is one of those people who, as they say, is to the right of Attila the Hun (thereby giving Attila a bad name), and the Democrats haven't got the guts to block his nomination. But, still, the nation's top lawyer ought to stand for something. Like the law and the Constitution. Tell your senators to vote for the Constitution and the rule of law, and against Mukasey.
Okay, so Mukasey's the best we can hope for out of this lawless administration, the acting attorney-general is one of those people who, as they say, is to the right of Attila the Hun (thereby giving Attila a bad name), and the Democrats haven't got the guts to block his nomination. But, still, the nation's top lawyer ought to stand for something. Like the law and the Constitution. Tell your senators to vote for the Constitution and the rule of law, and against Mukasey.
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Post-9/11 Cases Fuel Criticism for Nominee
By PHILIP SHENON - The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — The 21-year-old Jordanian immigrant was in shackles when he was brought into the courtroom of Judge Michael B. Mukasey in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
It was Oct. 2, 2001, and the prisoner, Osama Awadallah, then a college student in San Diego with no criminal record, was one of dozens of Arab men detained around the country in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks as potential witnesses in the terrorism investigation.
Before the hearing, Mr. Awadallah told his lawyer that he had been beaten in the federal detention center in Manhattan, producing bruises that were hidden beneath his orange prison jumpsuit. But when his lawyer told this to Judge Mukasey, the judge seemed little concerned.
"As far as the claim that he was beaten, I will tell you that he looks fine to me," said Judge Mukasey ...
Link to the NYT article
Agreed - thumbs down. America deserves a better head of the DOJ than this.
wow. Talk about trying to have the cake and eating it to. At least he is in the open about what he believes.
Well, no, actually, he wasn't, as shown by his unwillingness or inability to say whether waterboarding is torture. As it happens, I saw the exchange between Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI), who is a former prosecutor, and Mukasey on this subject:
"SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: So is waterboarding constitutional?
"MICHAEL MUKASEY: I don't know what's involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.
"SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: If it's torture? That's a massive hedge. I mean, it either is or it isn't. Do you have an opinion on whether waterboarding, which is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces, and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning, is that constitutional?
"MICHAEL MUKASEY: If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.
"SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: I'm very disappointed in that answer. I think it is purely semantic."
This is not a guy who just says what he means.
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