I am blistering mad at Chuck Schumer today, but I will try to keep my analysis calm and reasoned. Schumer penned his justification for voting to confirm attorney general nominee Mike Mukasey in his homestate New York Times. His rationale is deeply, deeply dishonest.
There are three main reasons to oppose the confirmation of Mike Mukasey.
1. He has promised not to enforce congressional subpoenas of administration officials if they, in any way, relied on Department of Justice legal reasoning to defy the law.
2. He has demonstrated basic agreement with the Unitary Executive Theory, used by Dick Cheney and David Addington to put the Executive division of government above the law.
3. He has refused to acknowledge that waterboarding (better known colloquially as water torture) is torture, and is banned by the law, treaty, and the Constitution.
Schumer would have us ignore the first two objections and then accept a ridiculous standard on the third.
Watch.
I understand and respect my colleagues who believe that Judge Mukasey’s view on torture should trump all other considerations.
Who are these colleagues that think that it is torture alone that should trump all other considerations? Here’s Russ Feingold’s statement:
At this point in our history, however, the country also needs an Attorney General who will tell the President that he cannot ignore the laws passed by Congress. Unfortunately, Judge Mukasey was unwilling to reject the extreme and dangerous theories of executive power that this administration has put forward.
The nation’s top law enforcement officer must be able to stand up to a chief executive who thinks he is above the law. The rule of law is too important to our country’s history and to its future to compromise on that bedrock principle.
Feingold objected to Mukasey’s sympathy for the Unitary Executive theory. He didn’t even mention torture.
Schumer’s defense of Mukasey rests on his alleged good character. The senator quotes his colleague, Sheldon Whitehouse, saying of Mukasey that he is “a brilliant lawyer, a distinguished jurist and by all accounts a good man.” Senators use many such platitudes; they mean nothing. Have we reached the point in this country where a man can countenance torture and the shredding of the separation of powers, and still be called ‘a good man’? At what point do we say ‘no’, such a man cannot be good? Is this now a partisan point of view? Mukasey has no respect for the rule of law…especially the rule of law from Congress’ point of view. An attorney general that doesn’t recognize Congress’ right to subpoena witnesses and have those subpoenas enforced is not a man that has respect for the law. And, yet, Schumer says:
My colleagues who oppose his confirmation have gone out of their way to praise his character and qualifications.
His testimony in the hearings has called his character into question.
Most important, Judge Mukasey has demonstrated his fidelity to the rule of law, saying that if he believed the president were violating the law he would resign.
The problem is that Mukasey doesn’t agree that the president has been and is breaking the law. If he had any character he would resign right now, not explain to us why the president and his underlings cannot be held accountable.
Schumer wants us to ignore all this and keep our minds distracted by the single issue of waterboarding. Bet, even there, he is totally disingenuous. Waterboarding is torture. Torture is illegal. It is proscribed by statute, by treaty, and by the Constitution. Why on earth do we need to pass another law to enforce laws that already exist in multiple forms?
Judge Mukasey’s refusal to state that waterboarding is illegal was unsatisfactory to me and many other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Congress is now considering — and I hope we will soon pass — a law that would explicitly ban the use of waterboarding and other abusive interrogation techniques. And I am confident that Judge Mukasey would enforce that law.
Who cares if he will enforce it? Why won’t he enforce the laws that are already on the books?
Schumer wants to convince us, and perhaps himself, that it is okay to confirm Mukasey. His argument reeks of prevarication. When you cut through all the obfuscation, it comes down to a belief that Mukasey will stand up to David Addington every once in a while.
Should we reject Judge Mukasey, President Bush has said he would install an acting, caretaker attorney general who could serve for the rest of his term without the advice and consent of the Senate. To accept such an unaccountable attorney general, I believe, would be to surrender the department to the extreme ideology of Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, David Addington. All the work we did to pressure Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign would be undone in a moment.
So, even though Mukasey has taken David Addington’s position on every single other issue, his commitment to enforce a new (superfluous and currently non-existent) law banning torture means that he opposes Addington?
Schumer has no argument. He’d like to have someone depoliticize the Justice Department. But, under the circumstances, that is somewhere between a hashish dream and taking a pig to the spa.
I used to respect Schumer for his effectiveness and for his strong positions on most issues. No more. I now actively dislike the man.
