Prometheus 6

Those senators who truly want to bring the nation back from the disgrace of Mr. Bush's interrogation policies should do two things. They should confirm Mr. Mukasey, who is far more independent and qualified than either of Mr. Bush's previous two nominees. And they should do something which, for all the rhetoric, they have so far declined to do: ban torture, by passing the National Security with Justice Act sponsored by Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.). The act would limit all United States personnel -- military and civilian -- to using only interrogation techniques authorized by the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation, which expressly prohibits waterboarding and which military leaders have said gives them the tools they need to get reliable information from difficult subjects.

Mr. Mukasey and Torture
The Senate should confirm the former and ban the latter.
Friday, November 2, 2007; A20

IT IS EXTRAORDINARY that a man who rightly would have been confirmed with overwhelming support had he been President Bush's first nominee for attorney general may now be denied that post in the waning months of the administration. Just as extraordinary is Mr. Bush's campaign to salvage the nomination of Michael B. Mukasey. Yesterday, in a rare Oval OfficeHeritage Foundation, Mr. Bush bemoaned the imperiled state of Mr. Mukasey's nomination without one iota of self-awareness that the nomination is in trouble because of the president's own warped policies on torture. meeting with reporters and later in a speech before the

Mr. Mukasey is being judged not on his merits but as a proxy for Mr. Bush. Yet critics of the nomination, while understandably disturbed by Mr. Mukasey's unwillingness to label waterboarding illegal, may be working against the last, best hope to see the rule of law reemerge in this administration.

Mr. Mukasey's 172 pages of written responses to senators' questions leave no doubt that he is a staunchly conservative lawyer. He believes the Second Amendment bestows an individual right to bear arms. He recoils at the idea of appointing a special prosecutor when, in his words, the "members of the Department have the integrity and ability to discharge whatever responsibilities they may have." He embraces an expansive vision of presidential power that allows the president to ignore an "unconstitutional law" if it infringes on the powers of the executive.

This last view, when put into action by unqualified sycophants such as former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, leads to extreme and dangerous power grabs, not to mention grotesque distortions of the law that produce such results as the notorious 2002 "torture memo."