Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed tonight while giving a speech to the Federalist Society in Washington, according to three senior administration officials.
Details about Mukasey’s condition were not immediately available at 8:40 Pm MST.
The film clip of Mr. Mukasey at the podium shows him wearing his glasses and in full formal business dress, talking away and suddenly slowing down, pausing, his head begins to lower toward his chest and it appears as the tape went to black that the poor soul fell to the floor. There is a murmur in the background as though someone in the audience immediately grokked what was happening. And it appears now that as we see the second half of the clip that three big men do manage to grab hold of him and lower him, with difficulty, to the floor. Mr. Mukasey looks very gray in the face going down.
Audience members said they began praying, fearing a stroke.
Mukasey, born in the Bronx, is a former federal prosecutor from New York City who succeeded the troubled reign of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Mr. Mukasey’s adjudication process by Congress almost collapsed when he waffled about on questions re torture of jailed combatants whose rights to habeas corpus had been suspended by fiat.
At 10:30 p.m. Eastern, medical officials were still working on Mr. Mukasey on the stage, administration witnesses said.
Most recent report is that an ambulance has been dispatched.
Even though I’ve seen sudden death many times in my life at disaster sites, still to see even a film clip of a person being more or less fine one moment and then suddenly as though the electricity has been cut, and the puppet strings severed, is so deeply a reminder of how strong, yet so fragile the body can be, the envelope alone being not much thicker than a light-weight weave of cashmere… and the brain, so brilliantly complex, yet so dependent on blood flow unimpeded… and the heart, the great muscle at the center of the mid body, so tough and yet so tender to disruption at mysterious times…