Michael Mukasey

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Mukasey: Don’t Know Much About Waterboarding

January 30, 2008 | 3 comments

Memo to Sen. Dianne Feinstein: thanks a whole big bundle.

Too well I recall the morning last November when I read your stated intention to vote in favor of confirming Michael Mukasey as U.S. Attorney General. It made what would have been a pleasant breakfast at a local café go down quite a bit less easily. I narrowly averted embarrassment, because your characterizations of Judge Mukasey as independent-minded and repulsed by the idea of torture were such stuff as spit-takes are made on. I couldn’t believe that you, my home state’s senior senator, had watched the same confirmation hearings as I had and not come away similarly disgusted at Mukasey’s craven dodging of the torture issue.

Your op-ed included a desire to see Judge Mukasey come before the senate panel again to have another chat about the whole Dick Cheney/Jack Bauer-iziation of American justice thing. Well, who’s back on the Hill today but your guy Mike the AG, front and center, talking waterboarding and destroyed CIA interrogation tapes. You must’ve been geeked, armed with a bucket of popcorn and ready to see The Muke torque up and bring the outrage, huh?

There are times when a mere “I told you so” doesn’t seem to cover it.
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We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

October 23, 2007 | Permalink

Over at Balkinization, Brian Tamahana has shared a moment of sickening clarity:

I had lunch today with a prominent German Constitutional scholar who was flabbergasted about something that I could not adequately explain.

He asked me how the candidate to become the top legal official of the U.S. government could say that he does not know whether water-boarding constitutes “torture” (as Judge Mukasey stated yesterday in his confirmation hearings). My colleague insisted that in Germany any person who uttered such a statement would be finished. He found it shocking that a person could say this in America and still become our Attorney General.

At first I was surprised at his genuine disbelief; and then I felt a bit ashamed that I did not also react with disbelief.

And yesterday at Slate, a piece Read the rest of this entry »