From Sam Smith:HERE WE GO AGAIN: AG APPOINTEE DOESN'T KNOW IF WATER BOARDING IS TORTURE
WASHINGTON POST - President Bush's choice for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey, embraced some of the administration's most controversial legal positions yesterday, suggesting that Bush can ignore surveillance statutes in wartime and avoiding a declaration that simulated drowning constitutes torture under U.S. laws. .
Mukasey aroused Democrats' concerns by testifying that there may be occasions when the president's powers as commander in chief could trump a federal law requiring that a special court approve intelligence-related wiretaps. . .
Mukasey also repeatedly demurred when asked whether an interrogation technique that involves simulated drowning, known as waterboarding, constitutes torture and is therefore illegal. "I don't know what's involved in the technique," Mukasey said. "If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional."
"That's a massive hedge," responded Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). "I mean, it either is or it isn't." Mukasey never directly answered the question. . .
Waterboarding generally involves strapping the prisoner to a hard surface, covering his face or mouth with a cloth, and pouring water over his face to create the sensation of drowning, according to human rights groups. The practice has been prosecuted as torture in U.S. military courts since the Spanish-American War.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/18/AR2007101801120.html
Check list:
- Judges need to experience more of the life activities that they rule upon.
- Judges can not belong to any secretive societies, and any such membership and organizations need to be studied and exposed.
A free society can demand no less.
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