Senators Schumer and Feinstein and the 9 Republicans who joined them simply reaffirmed that our current Congress is pathetic and incapable of asserting even the most basic moral [principles] of our society.

You’re overreacting, to say the least, as you would be were you to disparage criticism of Congress’s foreign-policy-related blunder about the Armenian genocide and relations with Turkey currently.

I’ve made a reasonable guess concerning not necessarily why Schumer and Feinstein have relented on the guy’s evasiveness, but how such a decision could benefit the Democrats between now and a year from now. What so many of my critics on here routinely fail to do, that I do, they need to do: think.

Why would two often-liberal Democrats, willing to be as antagonistic toward the Bush administration as the administration can be toward Congress, let the guy off so easily? There must be an advantage (to the Democrats) potentially in doing this to justify the decision.

In this case, it matters not one iota what the Dems might or might not be xchemeing. There is an up front valid argument for doing what they did, and it’s sound. We can support it on that basis without going into convolutions of speculation, that can never be anything but that – speculation.

In the meantime, there are decisions to be made.
They’re either good, or they’re not..

Yes because the question of whether the United States continues to engage in torture is purely an issue of the left.

Honesty, if you’d told me 6 years ago that we’d be arguing over whether the AG should be capable of publicly acknowledging that a known torture technique is illegal, I’d have thought you were crazy.

I certainly never considered the pro-torture position to be a Republican one.

Senators Schumer and Feinstein and the 9 Republicans who joined them simply reaffirmed that our current Congress is pathetic and incapable of asserting even the most basic moral principals of our society.

The United States should not torture and the Attorney General shouldn’t need the Congress to spell out for him every conceivable method that violates the law.

Any of you who think he’ll be more forthcoming now that he’s passed the single test where the Congress could hold him accountable are living in a very strange world.

The waterboarding question survives the nomination, and whether he answers now or later, Mukasey will eventually have to be very clear on the issue.

Well, the Dems should know better by now than to go too far left, to be politically cheap, to be simply obstructionist, or to approach the hysteria about this issue that we’ve seen elsewhere.

Actually, he doesn’t have to be clear, if he doesn’t want to, and some Democrats may well have done some thinking for a change, and decided this fact can be exploited. These Dems may not only be realistic about their own behavior but clever about Mukasey’s; if they don’t block his assumption of office (just gripe a bit about his evasiveness), and he continues to be evasive, that continues to make him and the Bush administration and Republicans overall look bad (or at least it can be “spun” that way) between now and November 2008. In other words, having someone evasive like that assume a highly visible position would be a potential gift to the Democrats, so some are moved to take it.

There is also the interest in protecting from culpabality those who have participated in waterboarding and other acts of torture in the past.

We have a long way to go before final clarity, I think.
I don’t expect Congress to be able to do much while Bush still holds the veto pen, BTW.

“In fact, Administration officials have stated as much. Waterboarding is clearly outlawed by several statutes, including both the Detainee Treatment Act and the 2006 Military Commissions Act (MCA). The MCA, for example, specifically prohibits acts that inflict ‘serious and non-transitory mental harm’ that ‘need not be prolonged.’ Staging a mock execution by inducing the misperception of drowning is a clear violation of this standard. For this reason, during the negotiations that led to the MCA, we were personally assured by Administration officials that this language, which applies to all agencies of the U.S. Government, prohibits waterboarding. We share Judge Mukasey’s revulsion at the use of waterboarding and we welcome his commitment to further review its legality once confirmed. We expect that he will reach the same conclusion.”

I read that to indicate at least this much: The waterboarding question survives the nomination, and whether he answers now or later, Mukasey will eventually have to be very clear on the issue. And then we will know just how helpful or heroic, harmful or horrible his confirmation was.

Not to be a total downer, but that is always the case.