Another Day, Another Notch, Another Disgrace

Disgraceful.

And that's the polite word for it. I'll refrain from using the pornographic and vulgar, leaving those to the Senate Judiciary Committee, both of which it promptly employed yesterday in stamping "endorsed" on Michael B. Mukasey's nomination as attorney general.

I also won't use the hyperbole of "heroic" to describe the eight who voted against Mukasey, since a vote against the executive-pixilated jurist was merely an exercise in common sense and an adherence to fundamental law.

Which happens to be how committee member Herb Kohl put it when he observed, "As Judge Mukasey’s answers mirror the president’s on this issue [of drowning suspects], and defy common sense, we are forced to question his independence."

Then, hardly going over the top to frame what's beyond the pale, Kohl continued: "The attorney general's loyalties must be to the Constitution, to the American people, and to the law. Too much doubt on this point is disqualifying."

Perhaps "too much doubt" would indeed have disqualified him, but it turned out that absolute certainty in Mukasey's unitary-executive, the-president-can-do-no-wrong juris(im)prudence was a plenty acceptable alternative.

In answer to the chairman's lucid plea for "an attorney general who believes and understands that there have to be limitations on executive power," as well as Ted Kennedy's supplication simply for one who would "support and defend the Constitution of the United States," all nine Republicans on the committee responded, Semper fi, to discord and degeneration.

And they did so with the most curious reasoning. Let's let ranking Republican Arlen Specter -- he's a former prosecutor, you know, which he mentions nearly as often as Rudy's "9/11" -- lay out the logic.

He first noted a triumvirate of colossal worries -- the good judge seems quite cozy with torture and clearly fails to see any boundary line for presidential power; plus Congress has stepped back from "deliberating" both.

"But," pronounced Specter, "all factors considered, I think that the balance is decisively in favor of confirming Judge Mukasey."

Say what? My thanks to Dorothy Parker as I note, or sputter in incredulity, that Specter's reasoning powers here ran the gamut from A to B.

Defining the remaining eightfold nincompoopism on the Republican side requires merely a listing of names, which speak for themselves: Senators Sam Brownback, Tom Coburn, John Cornyn, Lindsey Graham, Charles E. Grassley, Orrin G. Hatch, Jon Kyl and Jeff Sessions.

Disgraceful? Well, more like typical.

The radical anomalies, of course, were Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, about whom the most positive thing I can say is that they didn't attend with paper bags over their heads.

Press reports described the two's endorsing comments as "restrained" -- a condition physically required of me as they cast their "yea" votes.

Reaching down into the depths of a logic so wretched it made Specter sound like Aristotle, Schumer and Feinstein "acknowledg[ed] the nominee’s qualifications and declar[ed]" -- brace yourself -- "that the best qualification is that Mr. Mukasey is not Alberto R. Gonzales" -- which is like praising the promotion of Heinrich Himmler because he wasn't Ernst Röhm.

But at least we can now add Nov. 6 to FDR's cataloguing of days of infamy, which now pretty much blanket the calendar -- courtesy not some foreign foe, but the United States Congress.

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Comments

[Kato Krause]

It has not yet been said so let me say it now: Our fight to preserve democracy is over as Mukasey is in position to sweep all of Georgies High Crimes, Treasons, and Misdemeanors under the rug.

Congratulations to Senators Schumer-NY and Feinstein-CA for securing there positions in the New World Order. Dianne, I'll look forward to licking your feet and feeding your FAT FACE grapes as I gently move an oversized palm frond.

[Dana Hatch]

Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice...can't get fooled again! Kucinich in '08, the rest are worthless. Actually, I like Gravel but his own party has decided his campaign doesn't exist.

[Roger Drowne EC]

Thank ALL Republicans REPS... 4 Voting for Impeachment

What a "twist of fate", Pass it on

ALSO... Call Dems and tell em what U think

Peace & Later, [email protected]

30 X 60 in. Protest Painting ( TREASON copleated in 2001 ) at...

http://www.RogerART.com

OK 2 Copy & Pass It On
.

[Clemsy]

I joined the democratic party prior to the last presidential election along with many other militant independents in the hope of adding some spine to the useless party of handringers. I've come to suspect I'd be leaving the party, in disgust, after voting against Hillary in the primary.

Can't happen soon enough. Every day makes me feel a little more soiled.

Schumer is my senator. He's a disgrace. Both he and hillary voted to give Bush war powers. Both exposed themselves as either underinformed or idiots by doing so.

Maybe just underinformed idiots.

[deeply worried]

A black day indeed.

Feinstein's and Schumer's positions are shameful, truly shameful.

There can be no doubt, as Sen Kennedy patiently demonstrated, that waterboarding is ALREADY illegal under statute. It is not a legal debate.

It was incredible to hear senator after senator give cogent reasons opposing waterboarding..Sen Graham was a good example of this..who then went ahead and said they voted in the affirmative.

Simply incredible.

Simply shameful.

[deeply worried]

After listening to, reading and rereading Sen Schumer's statement of support for the nomination, I would like to note a few things of interest for those who might be swayed by the inherent reasonableness and even sagacity of what this esteemed Senator says of his decision.

There are two types of "ought" statements: one is moral: "We ought not kill"; the other is instrumental: "To get a checkmate he ought to move his rook."

Schumers arguments are all instrumental. They are not based on moral considerations. He argues quite reasonably that to get the Dept of Justice we want, we ought to affirm Mukasey.

But left unexplored, deliberately so, is whether it is a greater thing to have a functioning Dept of Justice or to maintain the rule of law and our traditional morality.

Schumer opts for the former.

Again we see ends/means reasoning.

Exactly the same reasoning modality employed in support of torture.

This type of reasoning looks at outcomes and justifies means used to achieve those outcomes.

But means, as things-in-themselves, can be intolerable..for ANY end.

Schumer and Feinstein and the other enablers forgot that.

[chanceny]

Demoralized and confounded describes my continuous condition as I watch, in shock and awe, as our effin ELECTED representatives further twist their dull backstabbing knives into my back. I see the two-headed demon monster, adorned ever so bi-partisanly, demonstrating their equal culpability, in red and blue, devouring America's promise. Unless some charasmatic patriot steps up, who can galvanize us to act on our common behalf and conquer our divide, we're stuck with the schmucks we've in-or-ad-vertently put in power.

[OH]

America expects support for Torturers like Mukasey from the Republicans - Democrats have no excuse. Majority Leader Harry Reid could have kicked Finestain and Scummer's ass - but he didn't. The Democrats are weak, cowardly supplicants to George Bush and they know it. What a disgrace.

[LAM]

Its a complete amd utter shame when the idea of America and the American Way is so casually cast aside. Do these fools read the polls? Do they know about the anger out there at the loss of a great Beacon of Hope? Who will save America from the fools in office? We simply have to do better.

[The Old Hippy]

Kick them ALL out. Return no Representative. Return no Senator. We can't trust any of them. If we can't clean houses by votes, do we have the Balls, like the Pakistani lawyers, to take to the streets? If not, we are doomed to be slaves to the corporatists.

[Catfish]

Can any of us in good conscience donate money to the Democratic Party?

[Vanna]

The torture will not end. Here's why: Who would we stop, what names would we give out, whose orders would we belay?

What military person, once a proud soldier doing his or her duty, can become an instant criminal based on a policy change? No one's going to stop the torture, because that would mean creating retroactive criminals. Mukasey's not going to do it. Leahy's not either. Nobody will. Making criminals out of blue-eyed soldier boys (because that's how it will play to the public) is career suicide. Boy, is that "hating the troops" or what?

I predict an AMAZING, ASTOUNDING INTELLIGENCE SUCCESS! Victory, victory, glorious Victory over an Evil Plot--victory through waterboarding.

There will be a "terrorist plot," and it will be big and messy and scary beyond belief. But someone, a con's Pat Tillman perhaps, will have thwarted the Evil Plot to Kill 'Merican Babies because he WATERBOARDED the Dark Evil Turbaned Terrorist (who will arrive complete with photos, videos, websites, and a press packet of How I Hate Free Americans And Thirsted To Bomb Them For Allah And Virgins Since I Was A Mere Boy).

The horse is out of the barn, the cat out of the bag, the toothpaste out of the tube. The bell is rung.

When U.S. torture is criminalized again, we'll all be long dead. Maybe in some millennial remnant society there will be a monument or two, to me and you.