Gonzo's replacement: Bush is above the law, and waterboarding's cool.
posted by
Wally
8:11 AM
He may not have used those exact words, but in Thursday's Senate confirmation hearing, Michael Mukasey (Bush's nominee for Attorney General), made that point clear enough.
On the second day of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey went further than he had the day before in arguing that the White House had constitutional authority to act beyond the limits of laws enacted by Congress, especially when it came to national defense.
He suggested that both the administration's program of eavesdropping without warrants and its use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects, including waterboarding, might be acceptable under the Constitution even if they went beyond what the law technically allowed. Mr. Mukasey said the president's authority as commander in chief might allow him to supersede laws written by Congress. According to Mukasey's non-answers, the President isn't required to obey either U.S. law or international law (i.e. Geneva Convention). The law simply does not apply to him.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't (or wasn't) the United States a "nation of laws"? Didn't we break away from the King specifically because we didn't want any "man" to be above the law? If the law no longer applies to Bush, doesn't that make him, by definition, no longer President, but Dictator? Doesn't that go directly against the Constitution as laid out by the Founding Fathers?
When the man hand chosen by the President to uphold and enforce the law flatly states that he will not enforce those laws against the President who chose him, isn't he clearly stating that he will not do the job he is being hired to do? This is his version of a "job interview", and in it he is clearly stating that he will be insubordinate to his oath of office and that he will refuse to carry out the duties central to his job. Try that next time you're interviewing for a job and let me know how that works out for you. Can it be any more clear that this man is not qualified for the position?
Unfortunately, the H.R. team that is the Senate is incompetent when it comes to vetting qualified applicants. In spite of Mukasey's forthright admission of his intent to not do his job, he'll be approved, and we'll end up with another Gonzo - only smarter - which only makes him more dangerous to the country, and makes Congress even more impotent and irrelevant.
Hail King George
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