Chuck at the Helm

This week will bring a vote in the Senate Judicial Committee on the nomination of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General. Friday, late into the afternoon and non-prime time news time, Senator Chuckie Schumer and Senator Diane Feinstein announced that they would, in fact, be supporting Mukasey. With their support, the vote will pass in committee and go to the floor of the Senate. Schumer let the nomination twist in the wind until that late hour by refusing to say which way he intended to vote.

The irony is not lost on those watching the committee. Schumer was the Senator who sent a list of nominee names to the White House that the Dems considered acceptable for consideration. Schumer thinks he is running the country anyway, so, sure, why not a list of those acceptable to him, huh? Judge Mukasey was featured as a great selection. A judge who would receive strong bi-partisan support as a fair, independent individual, Schumer told the White House. He has unquestionable integrity and impeccable ethics, the White House was told.

Then the White House bowed to the Dems, yet again, and nominated Judge Mukasey. So, the hate machine that is the staff of Committee Chair Patrick Leahy, D-VT, and the likes of Teddy, the swimmer, Kennedy, morph into the forefront of the nomination. Why, he must be questioned thoroughly about his opinions on all things torture, all techniques used in pursuit of the global war on terror. Never mind the fact that the Judge hasn't received the top level intelligence briefings that the Senate committee has received. He must give his opinion on techniques that may or may not be used, right now. What was the Judge to do, I pondered? Guess?

This is why the whole concept of bi-partisanship is just a ruse in today's D.C. The Dems had no intention of allowing a nomination of President Bush's choice, a lame duck President, to come to fruition. What does the President think, anyway? That's he's entitled to have his nominees come to the floor of the Senate for a vote, barring no findings of criminal record or major questions of ethics? Please. That's so old fashioned, so 1990's.

You remember the good old 1990's, don't you? When we had a Dem President with no personal morality or sense of ethics, yet the Republican controlled Senate voted out his nominees almost always unanimously and he got his votes on the Senate floor. That's the process. Or, it used to be. Today's D.C. is so Bush deranged that the Dems refuse to accept yes as an answer to anything. No matter the issue, they are the party of defeatism.

Judge Mukasey was questioned on water boarding, a technique rarely used in questioning known mass murderers wishing harm to the U.S. and our soldiers. The Judge refused to positively declare the method as unconstitutional and stated that he has not been privy to de-classified intelligence briefings. The ones given to the Committee. He rightly answered that he will need to be briefed on the whole picture before he can make a judgement.

Mon Dieu! What kind of answer was that? Independent? Impartial? Intellectually curious? Please. We'll have none of that.

I said back when Attorney General Gonzales resigned that the Bush administration should just use the Deputy AG as the interim AG until the President's term is over. It is perfectly kosher to renew the Deputy AG over and over until the next administration comes in. I knew there was no way a decent hearing would be given to a good nominee.

For all the huffing and puffing of the defeatists, something seems to be forgotten. Twice the Senate has had a chance to vote to strip the CIA of this interrogation tool. Twice. Twice they declined to do so. Once in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and again in the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Teddy, the swimmer, Kennedy tried mightily to specifically prohibit waterboarding, along with other methods, and it lost 46-53, as pointed out in the opinionjournal.com article recently.

The defeatists are so completely beholding to the anti-war and fringe left that they wish to go back to the good old Clinton days of treating terrorist like common felons. Never mind that treating terrorists as just another criminal all throughout the 1990's brought us 9/11/01.

History never repeats itself, right?

Which Senator said this about waterboarding at a hearing in 2004? "We ought to be reasonable about this. I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake...It is easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used, but when you are in the foxhole it is a very different deal. And I respect, i think we all respect the fact that the President is in the foxhole every day."

Yes. It was Senator Chuckie Schumer.