Orwell would be proud:
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey has firmly rejected Congressional demands that he provide information about the Justice Department’s investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction of videotapes showing interrogations, a stance that inflamed a feud between Capitol Hill and the administration this afternoon.
“The department has a long-standing policy of declining to provide nonpublic information about pending matters,” Mr. Mukasey wrote, in letters to Senate and House committee leaders, in which he noted that the Justice Department’s National Security Division and the C.I.A.’s inspector general’s office have already opened an inquiry into the episode.
Taking a position that annoyed a prominent Republican as well as Democrats, the attorney general wrote, “This policy is based in part on our interest in avoiding any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence.”
The Republican is Peter Hoekstra…normally as partisan as they come. Are you getting used to living in a authoritarian state?
Did anyone really expect something different from Mukasey? That’s why he was appointed. Is there room for the Supreme Court to come in here?
Bill Clinton is on the Charlie Rose Show tonight.
anybody with an iq above room temperature knew what was coming when muckasey got the nod, but why the fuck would you/we even want the supremes to be involved?
are you seriously proposing that, with addition of alito and roberts, there’s a snowballs chance in hell they’ll override this or rule against it?
if so, please share whatever drugs you’re using.
lTMF’sA
Right now?
Roberts is a conservative judge no doubt, but on matters relating to the separation of powers, I would think that there is plenty of precedence available. It is one thing to be a conservative, but another, an embarrassment, to flout the rulings of past Courts.
I am not a lawyer; it was only a suggestion. Remember Watergate?
It’s worth pointing out that if the will for it existed, Congress has the power to impeach pretty much the entire government. This power extends even to Supreme Court justices. In the final analysis, Congress keeps getting no for an answer because Congress is willing to accept no for an answer. The three branches of our government are not co-equal, nor did the Founders intend them to be. They intended for the legislative branch to hold sway over the executive and judicial branches, and they wrote it into the Constitution by handing the legislature the power to dismiss any member of the other two branches.
Congress needs to remember that it is the heart of the government and not the appendix.
Just my opinion but I think the congressional Democrats have made the strategic choice not to rock the boat until after 2008, not to give the Republicans ammunition by which to convince people that the Democrats are soft on terrorism and hampering our defense. We heard that in 2004: I feel safer with Bush (Koepel’s Nightline)
We have only slight edges in both houses of Congress and the Republican members are likely to hold sway on any effort to take the administration down.
That’s my take on it, anyway.
chuck schumer must be so proud of himself. after all, mukasey was the best we were going to get and bush would have made a recess appointment anyway. Of course, that’s becasue Democrats keep having recesses.
i hate the democrats. I HATE them. I HATE THEM.