How Could They? Mukasey Gets Confirmed
November 8, 2007 by Mike Rushmore
Mukasey has just been confirmed by the senate as the next attorney general. This is completely absurd. I mean come on. Congress is a joke. That joke isn’t funny anymore. How does Mukasey get confirmed without answering the waterboarding question? His inability to answer is his answer. Waterboarding is torture under United States law. No reasonable person can argue that it isn’t, so Mukasey hasn’t. He is telling America that he will be no different from Alberto (“I don’t recallâ€) Gonzolez. We deserve different. We deserve better. We should demand it.
It is hard to express my outrage over Congress for both confirming Mukasey and effectively killing Kucinich’s attempt to impeach Cheney in the same week. I just want to shout out “Arrrrrg!†like Charlie Brown.
This is disgusting. What congress has done by confirming Mukasey is effectively tell the President a few things that he is very happy to hear. Congress will not oversee his actions. Congress will not even attempt to control him. Congress approves of waterboarding. The democrats won’t live up to what they promised the American people during the last elections. Where is the democratic party’s passion for democracy and human rights?
Mukasey might have actually been a good candidate for attorney general, but when he decided to stay silent about waterboarding, he became completely unacceptable. With Gonzolez, we didn’t know beforehand that he was for torture. With Mukasey, we learned his stance on torture during the confirmation hearings, but he still got confirmed. How did this happen? Congress has effectively approved torture.
The only reason this could possibly be acceptable is if there is some sort of a compromise. But there isn’t a compromise. Instead congress has just decided to roll over for the President.
There has been talk of a bill that would close loophole in the law that allows waterboarding, but in fact, there isn’t a loophole. It is clearly illegal under the Geneva Conventions. And even then, any bill that would close up whatever supposed loophole Bush is using to claim that his actions are legal won’t be passed. Even if the bill somehow got through both houses of congress, it would be vetoed, and the democrats certainly don’t have the votes to overturn a veto.
Not confirming Mukasey was congress’ only chance to stop, or at least to voice its objection to, the practice of waterboarding. Now we’re stuck. Great job idiots.
Well Mukasey is better then the last attorney general who kept saying “I do not recall” But he said it would matter with the situation, Thow they could have asked more questions.
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But why settle for an Attorney General who seems to be confused as to whether torture is illegal or not?
And I would like to note that the four presidential candidates who are currently senators didn’t seem to think that this was important enough to come back to Washington to vote on: Clinton, Obama, Dodd, Biden, and three others senators (not running for president) did not vote. Their four votes alone, had they voted against Mukasey, would not have kept him from being confirmed (the vote was 53-40). However, if those four had exercised some leadership on the matter, things might have turned out differently. But, of course, they did not. Hillary and Obama aren’t even doing their jobs properly and effectively leading as representatives, so how can we expect them to be good presidents who exercise leadership (I leave Dodd and Biden off this because they have such a long record in the Senate, each with their respective accomplishments, I’m sure)?
And, like you say, it is horrible how our so-called representatives continue to bend to the wills of the opposing forces and constantly compromise their values. And, I have to say, if it takes another 8 years of Republican domination for the Democrats to get their heads on straight, then I would gladly take those 8 years of Republican domination. Currently, the Democrats and the Republicans are, in my opinion, both absolutely awful. This latest endorsement of torture by the Democrats is only one example of this.
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