Schumer and Feinstein Hand Torture a Victory
Do we really need another attorney general who doesn't know what torture is? The Senate Judiciary Committee just barely approved the nomination of Michael Mukasey on Tuesday. He is expected to breeze through the rest of the process. Remember some weeks from now, when the head of the Justice Department is a man who, despite fact and testimony and common sense, can't call torture by its name, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Charles Schumer are responsible.Do we really need another attorney general who doesn’t know what torture is? The Senate Judiciary Committee just barely approved the nomination of Michael Mukasey on Tuesday. He is expected to breeze through the rest of the process. Remember some weeks from now, when the head of the Justice Department is a man who, despite fact and testimony and common sense, can’t call torture by its name, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Charles Schumer are responsible.
Dig, Root, GrowWashington Post:
The Senate Judiciary Committee narrowly approved the nomination of Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general yesterday, moving him a step closer to virtually assured confirmation on the Senate floor as the new head of the troubled Justice Department.
The committee’s 11 to 8 vote in favor of Mukasey was accompanied by an impassioned exchange of views between his supporters and opponents, who divided principally over of his refusal to say whether an aggressive interrogation tactic that mimics drowning amounts to illegal torture under U.S. law.
Two prominent Democrats, Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), joined nine Republicans in voting for Mukasey, arguing that the former federal judge was the best candidate they could expect as the Bush administration’s replacement for Alberto R. Gonzales, who resigned as attorney general in September under a cloud of scandal.
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Forget WikiLeaks, speeches to Goldman Sachs and the behind-the-scenes machinations of John Podesta. The FBI director’s letter to Congress was the ultimate October surprise.
After mischaracterizing a law governing medical marijuana distribution, the president who refused to prosecute those who led the U.S. into an indefinite war on terror told a Rolling Stone interviewer last month that he couldn't ask the Justice Department to "turn the other way" when it comes to potential violations of medical marijuana use.
How exactly does an administration lose millions of e-mails? However it happened, 22 million Bush-era White House e-mails have been recovered, and more may be found. The content, however, probably won't be made public for years.
Seems like even those Bushies who didn't manage to make it to the end of the W. age with their political reputations intact are popping up with brand new jobs; take, for example, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who's slated to teach a political science course at Texas Tech University this fall.
The Bush administration may have exited the proverbial building, but that isn't stopping certain House Democrats, such as House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, from taking Bush sidekick Karl Rove to task for his potential role in the Justice Department's pink-slipping of several U.S. attorneys in 2006.
Read the devastating bipartisan report from the Senate Armed Services Committee that indicts high-level Bush administration officials -- including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- as bearing major responsibility for the torture at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo, and other detention facilities.
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