No excuse for Mukasey or torture. Period!

[ProSense]

Feinstein and Schumer should have rejected Mukasey based on this single statement (which makes no sense) by Schumer:

Under this administration, that nominee will certainly never share our views on issues like torture and wiretapping.

Unbelievable in itself because Schumer seems to think the admin is allowed to have a torture policy.

Although Bush said that if Mukasey wasn't confirmed, there would be no AG, he would most likely have recess appointed Mukasey as he did Foxie.

What Feinstein and Schumer did, however, is give Bush cover from making a recess appointment that would obviously continue to show that Bush believes he is above the law and that everyone in his administration condones torture. A recess appointment would spark controversy. If Bush recess appointed Mukasey or even someone like Bork, there is no difference between any of them. They will all uphold Bush/Cheney/Addington's torture policy.

No excuse!

On Mukasey, Feinstein doesn't get it; Jack Balkin explains

The Mukasey Precedent

[endarkenment]

1. "Schumer seems to think the admin is allowed to have a torture policy"

bingo.

[Solly Mack]

5. Yep

[tekisui]

11. Yet, he seemed so upset with Gonzo a few months ago.

What happened?

[LakeSamish706]

2. And on that note, I truly think this country is screwed....

It's bad enough when you have the Repugs thinking that torture is ok, its quit another when some of our own Dems think that its ok....

And a PS to this:

We even have some Repugs that think it is wrong!

[rateyes]

3. Yes!

No.excuses.period. End.of.sentence.

[ProSense]

4. "One of the high-level CIA detainees, Majid Khan..."

Monday, November 05, 2007

Our Classification Pathologies

Marty Lederman

One of the high-level CIA detainees, Majid Khan, recently met over eight days with his attorneys, and told them of the torture that he alleges the CIA inflicted upon him. His attorneys quite understandably wish to let Congress and the public know what our government has done to their client. But as a condition of being able to speak to their client in the first place, the government required them to agree not to reveal what their client told them, because (as they explained in a letter to Senators today) "everything we learned from our client is presumptively classified."

I've said this before but it's worth saying again: This is absurd, and, assuming that Khan or his attorneys have any First or Sixth Amendment rights (a hard question, perhaps), it's likely unconstitutional, too. Even if it made sense to classify the CIA techniques in the first place, once the government "reveals" its classified information to private persons outside the government, the classification has been compromised. Classification rules restrict what government officials may say. And they restrict what can be said by those (e.g., judges, opposing counsel) who are given the information only on the condition that they not disclose it. But Khan himself did not "ask for" this "information," or agree to any conditions on disclose before "receiving" it. Therefore, the only reason he cannot publish an account of what the CIA did to him on the front page of the New York Times (or ask his lawyers to do so) is not that he is subject to classification restrictions, but instead that the government has gagged him as part of its detention practice.

more

[Rex]

6. There is no slippery slope on torture.

Restraining someone physically and causing pain must be considered torture. I'm open to other 'rational scenarios' where there is an exception. I won't hold my breath.

[crickets]

7. Agreed! Glad to make the 5th rec.

:dem:

[spanone]

8. kick

[Individualist]

9. K&R

[robinlynne]

10. unless, of course, there were no recess!!!!

We would go and sit with our congress in office to maintain the constitution. I think it is worth one little holiday to restore democracy, don't you?

[ProSense]

12. Schumer op-ed pushing flawed logic

Schumer op-ed in today's NYT:

Should we reject Judge Mukasey, President Bush has said he would install an acting, caretaker attorney general who could serve for the rest of his term without the advice and consent of the Senate. To accept such an unaccountable attorney general, I believe, would be to surrender the department to the extreme ideology of Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, David Addington. All the work we did to pressure Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign would be undone in a moment.

I deeply oppose this administration’s opaque policy on the use of torture — its refusal to reveal what forms of interrogation it considers acceptable. In particular, I believe that the cruel and inhumane technique of waterboarding is not only repugnant but also illegal under current laws and conventions. I also support Congress’s efforts to pass additional measures that would explicitly ban this and other forms of torture. I voted for Senator Ted Kennedy’s anti-torture amendment in 2006 and am a co-sponsor of his similar bill in this Congress.

Judge Mukasey’s refusal to state that waterboarding is illegal was unsatisfactory to me and many other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Congress is now considering — and I hope we will soon pass — a law that would explicitly ban the use of waterboarding and other abusive interrogation techniques. And I am confident that Judge Mukasey would enforce that law.