Good Friday morning,
The U.S. Senate voted 53-40 last night to confirm the nomination of former federal judge Michael Mukasey to be attorney general. Minnesota’s Republican U.S. Senator Norm Coleman last week gave his reasons for supporting the nominations,
but Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., wasn’t ready to announce her plans until after the Judiciary Committee finished its work.
Last night, she joined 38 other Democrats in voting against the confirmation. Since I previously provided the full text of Coleman’s Mukasey statement I thought I’d better pass along the statement Klobuchar’s office issued last night to explain her decision:
“The Attorney General of the United States is our nation’s top law enforcement official and must be truly independent, with a clear focus on upholding the rule of law without fear or favor. In his testimony before the Judiciary Committee, Judge Mukasey did not demonstrate a clear, firm understanding that the Attorney General’s first commitment is to our Constitution, not the current resident of the White House.
Judge Mukasey does have an impressive record as a public servant. I hope that he will demonstrate a commitment to uphold the rule of law and help restore the public’s trust in the Department of Justice.”
What think?
It’s about damn time she started acting like a Democrat. After her pitiful performance on FISA, I was starting to wonder.
Obviously a symbolic statement, since the conclusion was foregone.
The principle is good, but the reality is that Bush is not going to nominate anyone who would not support his unsupportable positions.
I must agree with Charlie Schumer: if Mukasy were NOT approved, would we end up with anyone better? As good? At least Mukasy appears to be competent.
The only way to seriously change the Dept of Justice is to impeach Bush/Cheney.
How about a filibuster? Why should the “60 votes” rule only apply to things the Democrats want done? If Bush won’t nominate someone who passes Senatorial muster, that’s his problem.
No, it’s ours, since he can appoint an acting AG without Senate approval.
Sure, Bush can appoint an acting AG, but Reid can prevent a recess appointment of a permanent AG by keeping the Senate technically in session. At some point, the Dems need to actually make a stand on something and achieve more than a “symbolic statement”. This was an oppotunity to do such a thing and they whiffed.
A little bit ago in the business section of Eric’s former employer, the guy who wrote the recent book on NFL hiring had a thumb sucker pointing out that sometimes things are so bad that one new hire won’t solve them. While I’m glad Amy K. voted against a guy who claimed not to know whether waterboarding was torture, still I see the other side. One of the things Gonzales screwed up was the idea that the AG is responsible first to the Constitution and rule of law, but the another thing was turning the DOJ into a right wing bawdy house. It appears Mukasey won’t do anything about the first problem, but he does appear to respect the institution of the DOJ enough to begin cleaning up the second, and he apparently has the contacts and stature to persuade good people to fill the holes left by the partisan hacks.
The fact that the Dems could inveign against the authoritarian Mukasey so mightily (Schumer: “He’s dead wrong on torture!”), yet allow the vote when there was simply no way that McConnell’s Red State Repubs could have gotten 60 votes to end debate demonstrates that our republic is effectively brain dead. It may as well be taken off life support.
Mukasey told them that he wouldn’t tell the executive to comply with the law and he wouldn’t enforce Congressional subpeonas to Bushco. The Dem senators demanded nothing, no special prosecutor, no promise to comply with existing law. They caved in completely. When the executive refuses to be bound by the law, and the AG won’t compel enforcement, there is no reason to have an AG.
The “opposition” party simply is terrified to challenge an out-of-control lawbreaking executive with a 25% approval rating. Change and reform are thus impossible. The executive has shown that it is no longer required to follow the law, nor expected to. Welcome to our new “republic”.
May I point out that we’re talking about an Attorney General here, not a Supreme Court justice.
As part of the executive branch the AG is _supposed_ to take orders from the President.
He is not an independent agent.
The problem is with the President;
selecting his flunkies will not make much difference, since the AG _cannot_ overrule the President — simply disobey him, at which point he would be overruled or replaced.
Well, to the extent you are arguing that the only responsible course of action when presented with a lawbreaking president is impeachment, I agree.
Dems have now condoned the lawbreaking executive’s actions by (needlessly) permitting his flunky AG to be confirmed when they could have denied the senate’s imprimatur. They are now complicit in the executive’s lawbreaking and the AG’s “turning a blind eye” toward the lawbreaking.
Appointment of a special prosecutor could also introduce a measure of independence as well. Dems refuse to do either—instead they just allowed Bushco to continue its “lawbreaking as usual”. We’ll see if this backing into the WH strategy “works” and what will remain of the republic by then…
And the executive is not “supposed to take orders from the president” to engage in (or permit) lawbreaking activity by the executive branch. That’s not our system. At least, it wasn’t.
Excuse me, the AG is not supposed to take such “orders”.
The problem of course is what constitutes an illegal order.
A substantial portion of the citizenry feels that Bush’s actions are legal (more than approve of his performance as President).
Any judgment of guilt would be appealed to the Supreme Court (the final arbiter of constitutional legality under our system).
That’s why Court appointments are more important than the AG.
And any legal action (such as by a special prosecutor) would not likely be completed by the end of Bush’s term.
I agree that Bush (with the complicity of the Demos) have been unconstitutionally abridging our civil liberties, but it’s not clear that the majority of the population agrees. Polls seem to show that most people believe that civil liberties should be sacrificed when in danger.
Where is Ben Franklin when we need him?
(”Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”)
Again, the costs of an open political system.
Everyone wants to be the benevolent dictator who can make people do what they should for their own good (a good description of the Bushies, BTW) but that’s not our system.
So, how do we convince the people that we know what’s best for them?