Definition of Torture-- Watching This Useless Democratic Congress Twist in the Wind
Schumer, Feinstein Announce Support for Mukasey
By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, November 2, 2007; 5:21 PM
Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced this afternoon that they will vote in favor of confirming Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general, effectively ending a growing revolt by fellow Democrats that had threatened Mukasey's confirmation.
By announcing their support, the two Democrats virtually guarantee that Mukasey, with support from the nine Republicans, will be narrowly approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
. . . In announcing her support for the nominee, Feinstein said: "First and foremost, Michael Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales.
. . . Noting that waterboarding has been prosecuted as torture by the U.S. military, Leahy asked: "If an American was captured and waterboarded, would we consider it torture and want to raise bloody hell about it? Of course we would."
. . . "I like Michael Mukasey," Leahy said in his remarks. "I wish that I could support his nomination. But I cannot. America needs to be certain and confident of the bedrock principle -- deeply embedded in our laws and our values -- that no one, not even the President, is above the law."
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Bedrock principles are in short supply in this fearful country, terrified as it is of every furtive shadow.
Dianne Feinstein's absurd statement opens her approval of any of the 400 million Americans who are not Alberto Gonzales. She takes herself seriously and her responsibility to the country frivolously.
The emerging Democratic party is an unfunny joke, played too soon on an undeserving electorate. A year from now we have a national election they expect to sail through. That's Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reid's entire campaign strategy--to wait out George Bush through twelve more months of an unpopular war and try to profit from it politically. Meanwhile, they approve a judge who isn't sure waterboarding is torture if it might get the man who's pimping his candidacy in trouble.
That strategy is horribly callous and will be paid by the lives of young Americans. My own view is that Pelosi's Democrats will be turned back out of office for gross dereliction of duty. But even that doesn't matter.
What matters is no one really gives a tinker's damn.
* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Washington at Work, check out Opinion-Columns.com
This strategy, Nancy, isn't worth one more dead kid.