Mainstream News Lied To Us Again: Mukasey Is (Much) Worse Than Gonzales

Excerpt analysis by John Nichols at Yahoo.com (title same as behind the colon above)

those who focus too intensely on Mukasey's troubling dance around the waterboarding question make a mistake. Even if the nominee were to embrace the Geneva Conventions -- not to mention the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- and condemn all forms of torture as the cruel and unusual punishment that they are, he would still be an entirely unacceptable choice to serve as the nation's chief law-enforcement officer.

the fight to block this nomination cannot be abandoned. Mukasey's critics on the committee, led by Leahy and Feingold, should do everything in their power to re-frame the debate to focus on the broader question of whether a president can break the law -- and on the nominee's entirely unacceptable answers to it. They should pressure Schumer and Feinstein to reconsider, and they should reach out, aggressively, to "Republicans who know better" such as Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter.

That Mukasey has made the case against his conformation in undebatable.

For instance, he has defended the administration's attempts to dramatically expand the definition of executive privilege, telling the Judiciary Committee that it would be inappropriate for a U.S. attorney to press for contempt charges against a White House official who claimed to be protected by a grant of executive privilege. Under this reading of the law, U.S. attorneys would cease to be independent defenders of the rule of law and become mere extensions of the White House.

As such, Mukasey accepts a politicization of U.S. Attorneys far more extreme than that attempted by Gonzales and former White House political czar Karl Rove when they sought to remove U.S. Attorneys who failed to fully embrace the administration's electoral and ideological goals.

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Remember some of mainstream news other great screw ups from the past:

Henry Hyde will be fair and balanced when viewing the evidence against Clinton

Kenneth Starr will be an impartial investiator

George W. Bush is a moderate Republican who will most likely not change the nation's agenda much.

George W. Bush really did win the 2000 election (NORC report November 2001).  (Yeah, as long as you are happy with a crooked counting of the votes.  Every other way the votes were counted, Gore came out the winner.) 

A little war in Iraq.  What could possibly go wrong?  We go in, find out where those WMDs are and jump out.  Problem solved.   (Mainstream knew there were WMD in Iraq because they had published all the Bush administration's allegations of the same.  If it weren't true then how could their mighty truth seeking staff have made bogus reports?  Not possible, ergo....)

tags: mukasey  attorney general  constitution  rule of law  john nichols  the nation  

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