Michael Mukasey doesn’t get it, as explained by Glenn Greenwald [1]:
And when he was asked yesterday [2] explicitly whether he would advise the President that he has the power to “seize U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and detain them indefinitely without charge?,” all he would say in response was: “I certainly can’t say as of now there is clear authority authorizing what I thought there was authority to authorize in Padilla” (a concession he made grudgingly, only after claiming it was an “open” question and only after he made a series of legal arguments as to why the President does have that power).
The very idea that a nominee for U.S. Attorney General is explicitly open to the possibility that the President can indefinitely imprison U.S. citizens on U.S. soil with no charges is unfathomable. That is the most extreme, un-American and tyrannical power that exists. And yet, not only does his answer trigger virtually no mention by our media, it is almost certain that Mukasey will be confirmed overwhelmingly by the Senate without a ripple. That is why there is no higher priority than forcing attention on these issues and supporting and rewarding those rare instances of meaningful action — such as Dodd’s today — in defense of the rule of law and our basic constitutional liberties.
Is Greenwald being too hard on the corporate media? Consider today’s front page headline of the feckless St. Louis Post Dispatch: “Nominee objects to use of torture.” [3] Are they forgetting that disgraced Alberto Gonzales also claimed to be against torture? [4] Readers of the local St. Louis Paper baselessly assuming that Mukasey is actually going to pay attention to the Constitution when there is firm evidence that he doesn’t care about the Constitution.
Addendum: The NYT reports [5] on the actual testimony regarding one clear form of torture:
“Is waterboarding constitutional?” Mr. Mukasey was asked by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, in one of the sharpest exchanges.
“I don’t know what is involved in the technique,” Mr. Mukasey replied. “If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”
Mr. Whitehouse described Mr. Mukasey’s response as a “massive hedge” since the nominee refused to be drawn into a conversation about whether waterboarding amounted to torture; many lawmakers from both parties, as well as civil liberties and human rights groups, have said it is clearly a form of torture. The administration has suggested that it ended the practice after protests from Capitol Hill and elsewhere, although it has never said so explicitly.
“I mean, either it is or it isn’t,” Mr. Whitehouse continued.
Waterboarding, he said, “is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning. Is that constitutional?”
Mr. Mukasey again demurred, saying, “If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.”
Mr. Whitehouse said he was “very disappointed in that answer; I think it is purely semantic.”
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