Mukasey Signals He'll Be a Strong Bush Assett

The New York Times published an article on December 20, 2007 titled "Mukasey Signals He'll Be a Strong Bush Advocate"

(excerpts)

In what was billed as a major policy speech on Wednesday to a panel of the American Bar Association, Mr. Mukasey suggested that lawmakers who opposed legislation before Congress to broaden eavesdropping powers — and to offer legal protection for telephone utilities that cooperate — were undermining the ability to deal with terrorist threats.

“We’ve seen what happens when terrorists go undetected,” he said. “We have to do everything possible within the law to prevent terrorists from translating their warped beliefs into action. To stop them, we have to know their intentions, and one of the best ways to do that is by intercepting their communications.”

He used the speech to step up the call for telephone utilities to have legal immunity for their past cooperation with the eavesdropping without warrants by the National Security Agency.

In recent days, Mr. Mukasey has also upset Congressional Democrats by saying he would refuse to share information about the Justice Department’s investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction of tapes of the interrogation of top figures of Al Qaeda.

Mr. Mukasey wrote in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that he was only following tradition in declining to reveal “nonpublic” information to Congress about a potential criminal investigation. ...

The White House and Mr. Mukasey are pressing Congress to approve bills to make permanent a broad expansion of the National Security Agency’s wiretapping and eavesdropping and provide legal protection to phone utilities.

On Monday, Senate Democrats announced that they would put off any vote on the measures until next year, a setback for the administration.

Mr. Mukasey said it was crucial that the utilities have immunity from suits that accuse them of violating customers’ privacy rights and that ask them for billions of dollars in penalities.

“We simply cannot afford to discourage the private sector from helping us to detect and prevent the next terrorist attack,” he said. “Such companies deserve our gratitude, not litigation.”

Legalizing torture is a prime example of this nation going apostate no matter how the term is defined -- loosing its values and/or following the dictates of the entity that's history's biggest user of torture, the Roman Catholic Church.

Having been targeted by criminal law enforcement search and seizure with the police video "just grey static", I see Mukasey as a likely rubber stamp for a criminal apostate shadow government that criminally violates its 4th Amendment with the goal of violating its 1st Amendment.

Mukasey's Mirror of Logic

From The New York Times:

AG Rejects Demand for Information
By DAVID STOUT

Published: December 14, 2007

WASHINGTON — 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.”

Allowing the Bush Administration another cover up absolutely sends a message that the U.S. Attorney General is subject to political influence.

Welcome to Pottersville: We Can Have Our Cake and Eat it, Too.

Senator Fein$tein Massive Conflict of Interest

Senator Feinstein's husband made $50 million in "defense" contracts over a 4 year period.

http://www.metronews.com/feinstein.html
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy/browse_thread/thread/1cb541c1b34f092a/2fa6753e71d1ed9f#2fa6753e71d1ed9f

So much for the DemocRATs for safeguarding the U.S. Constitution.

Schumar - Feinstein Give Pass to Mukasey

Key DemocRATs, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., cross party lines to pledge support for Bush Attorney General nominee [waterboard-waffling Michael Mukasey], clearing way for confirmation: Mukasey Edges Closer to Attorney General Confirmation 02 Nov 2007 ABC News' Ed O'Keefe: Two key Democrats crossed party lines and pledged their support to President [sic] Bush's embattled Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey, all but ensuring the retired judge's confirmation as the nation's top law enforcement official.

John Holmes wrote: 5h 32m ago

Very disappointed with Senator Schumer! The waterboarding issue is at the very heart of what Mr. Mukasey will do when he gets into power. Yes, he is not Alberto Gonzalez, at least for now. And that makes it even more pressing an issue for the DEMS to identify who Mr. Mukasey really is, and where his allegaince lies--to the country or to the President? A single question could take care of that. Now. Mr. Schumer and Ms. Feinstein have denied the whole country the ability to determine where Mr. Mukasey's allegiance lies.

Mukasey OK with Government Crime

Just don't define it as such

Posting Date: October 22, 2007

Mukasey’s Support of Tyranny
Jacob Hornberger's Commentary

Conservatives are all aglow over President Bush’s selection of Michael B. Mukasey to replace Alberto Gonzalez as U.S. attorney general. The conservative love-fest for Mukasey comes as no surprise, especially given his positions:

1. Mukasey says he’s against torture. Yawn. So is President Bush. So is the CIA and the Pentagon. That’s not the point. The point is the definition of torture. These people simply define torture to exclude everything that they are doing to people. Once they puts their new, ever-changing, subjective definition of torture into effect, voila!, no more torture because whatever it is that they’re doing to people does not fall within their definition of torture. Mukasey adopts that position, which is why he could not bring himself to contradict his boss on whether the ancient art of water-boarding — i.e., forced drowning — is really subjecting somebody to torture.

2. Mukasey buys into the “enemy combatant” doctrine, the post-9/11 power assumed by the president and the military to label anyone, including American citizens, an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terror” and treat him accordingly. That is, without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment, Mukasey, a former federal judge, accepts the radical notion that a terrorist attack, historically a criminal act, automatically gave the president and the military the power to take any American into custody, subject him to water-boarding or other acts of non-torture (see above), and detain him indefinitely, even perhaps for the rest of his life. Equally bad, Musasey says that in any habeas corpus action, all that is needed to keep an American (or a foreigner) in military control is “some” evidence that he is in fact an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terror.”

3. Mukasey also believes that because the president is “at war,” which presumably means the “war on terror” (as compared to the war on drugs or the war on poverty), his “commander-in-chief” status means that he doesn’t have to comply with constitutional or congressional restrictions on this power, a position that Bush (and Vice President Cheney) have long held. Not surprisingly, Mukasey failed to explain how this is different from dictatorship — i.e., a ruler who has omnipotent powers to do “the right thing.”

http://www.swnewsherald.com/online_content/2007/10/102207ov_hor_mikasey.php

Mukasey Unable to Define Torture (and perhaps anything else!)

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.