Mukasey’s the one on the far right
He’s been nominated by Bush to be the new Attorney General and Chuck Schumer and all the usual (secretly?) pro-Bush Dem fuqwads are loving him up right now. He’s the judge who ruled it okay to hold Jose Padilla indefinitely without charges, just because King Bush had declared Padilla (incorrectly as it turned out, of course) an “enemy combatant.” Exact quote from Mukasey: “There’s a never-ending terror war on; screw the Constitution for the duration” or something like that.
Here’s more (emphasis added throughout) . . .
International Herald Tribune:
Mukasey, 66 years old and now in private practice in Manhattan, has repeatedly spoken out to support the administration’s claim to broad powers in pursuing terrorist threats, especially in conducting electronic surveillance of terrorist suspects and in imprisoning them before [‘before’? howabout ‘without’] trial.
World Socialist Website (some call this a suspect site, but I’ve always found its journalism more accurate than the mainstream stuff):
Most significantly, in December 2002, in an early case involving Jose Padilla, Mukasey ruled that US citizens captured on US soil could be held as “enemy combatants.” This decision favored the Bush administration on a central question in the “war on terror” and constituted a major attack on the democratic rights of all Americans. …
In the case of US citizen Jose Padilla, originally accused of plotting to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb” in the US, Mukasey signed the original order authorizing the government to hold Padilla as a “material witness” — a category used frequently in recent years to hold people against whom the government has insufficient evidence to prosecute. Padilla’s original hearings were also before Mukasey.
In June 2002, shortly before Mukasey was to rule on the continued ability of the government to hold Padilla as a material witness, the Bush administration declared him an “enemy combatant” and transferred him to a military brig in South Carolina. In his December 2002 ruling on this move, Mukasey accepted the category of “enemy combatant” as applied to US citizens.
According to Mukasey, the president’s commander-in-chief powers include “the power to detain unlawful combatants, and it matters not that Padilla is a United States citizen captured on United States soil.” It also did not matter that the “current conflict with Al Qaeda… can have no clear end,” Mukasey wrote.
NPR:
Mukasey is no stranger to the Padilla case. As district judge, he authorized Padilla’s arrest in 2002. He backed the White House’s view that Padilla could be held as an enemy combatant, although his decision was later overturned on appeal.
In a 2004 article, also in the Wall Street Journal, Mukasey defended the Patriot Act against charges that it eroded civil liberties. In particular, he defended “sneak-and-peek” warrants that allow agents, with court authorization, to enter premises, examine what is there and then leave.
Finally, this from CNN:
In the [Padilla] case, Mukasey overruled the Justice Department, which contended that Padilla, who had been declared an “enemy combatant” by Bush, did not have the right to see an attorney.
Notice the mainstream media subterfuge of that highlighted passive clause. Who upheld Bush’s ‘right’ to designate Padilla an enemy combatant who could be held without charges? Mukasey.
Well, that wasn’t finally, there’s also this, which is also discussed in the WSWS article above. Here we see Mukasey take the reactionary approach of prioritizing the Constitution over the Bill of Rights. Again, and I’m quoting Mukasey directly, “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom? Completely wrong, should be ‘eternal surveillance ‘ and so on.”
A bill of rights was omitted from the original Constitution over the objections of Patrick Henry and others. It may well be that those who drafted the original Constitution understood that if you give equal prominence to the provisions creating the government and the provisions guaranteeing rights against the government–God-given rights, no less, according to the Declaration of Independence–then citizens will feel that much less inclined to sacrifice in behalf of their government, and that much more inclined simply to go where their rights and their interests seem to take them.
So, as the historian Walter Berns has argued, the built-in message–the hidden message in the structure of the Constitution–is that the government it establishes is entitled, at least in the first instance, to receive from its citizens the benefit of the doubt. If we keep that in mind, then the spirit of liberty will be the spirit which, if it is not too sure that it is right, is at least sure enough to keep itself–and us–alive.
P.S. (It’s related, and) if you read just one paragraph this year, read this one by Paul Craig Roberts — from “Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By?” — explaining why the cops and rent-a-cops are acting more and more like Hitler brown shirts nowadays:
The answer is that police, most of whom have authoritarian personalities, have seen that constitutional rights are no longer protected. President Bush does not protect our constitutional rights. Neither does Vice President Cheney, nor the Attorney General, nor the US Congress. Just as Kerry allowed Meyer’s rights to be tasered out of him, Congress has enabled Bush to strip people, including American citizens, of constitutional protection and incarcerate them without presenting evidence.
(Also over at politicalfleshfeast.com)
