That shortly after it was mentioned that shooter's MO was to point at the Democrats handing over the match, his next post was to correct the record by pointing out that it was in fact two matches......

As you say, torture is not used to elicit information. It's not a reliable source. it is used by authoritarian regimes, like the Inquisition, like Saddam Hussein's, like the Soviet Union, like Orwell's Oceania, to intimidate and terrorize the a population, by forcing dissidents to make false confessions, and by implicitly threatening everyone in the society with torture.

This motive doesn't seem to apply very well in this circumstance. Other than the simple pyscho-sexual motives you mention, it is hard to identify who the target population. Who is the administration trying to terrorize into submission? The idea might be, as with North Korea, to force confessions for show trials. But the US court system pretty much rules out show trials. Padilla is about as far as the US system can go. In fact, they do all they can to AVOID trials, because they, by and large, don't have cases that will hold up. At this point, it is absolutely clear that the claims of intelligence professionals--that torture is needless and doesn't work--are true.

It really does seem to me that his may just be as awful, petty, and, frankly, evil, as Bush getting off on the idea of torturing people (the Karla Faye Tucker interview with Tucker Carlson comes to mind), and hiring the kinds of people who also enjoy inflicting pain and humiliation on helpless people.

I derive strength in my beliefs of the innate compassion of human beings from your gut expressions of passionate anger over this outrage. There is great good in this country, maybe this is how it manifests itself, in response to great evil.

have "principled" positions, maybe the journey required to become a Congressman or woman weeds out the ones with principled positions early on in the process. Fund raising twenty four hours a day may do this by itself. Still, if that's the reality, then we need to suck it up and put any pressure we can to keep this a democracy in more than name and get these people back into the human race.

Where is the debate on torture? I've heard "experts" say it doesn't work, that there are protocols of non-torture techniques that bring much better results. Why not have this debate out in the open? And what would it mean if torture had some use: strangling a baby will, after all, stop it from crying, but that doesn't mean we do it.

Maybe this is a naïve discussion. Salon has a story in today’s edition describing Hillary Clinton’s leaving herself “wiggle room” on the torture debate. Maybe you have to juggle a thousand interest groups not visible to someone like me to get into office and “waffling” is the only way you’re going to make it. If that’s what it takes to replace Bush with someone who doesn’t subscribe to this Imperial Presidency debacle, then so be it. I hope not.

I don't expect you to be locked in to every opinion you ever give, but if there's a change it would be nice to know what persuades you.

The first post says he's "close to the far right on the judicial spectrum" but still has "respect for the Constitution and the rule of law". Today you write about "how radical Mukasey is", "Mukasey's extremist views" and that "[w]hat Judge Mukasey believes is, without question, radical and disturbing." To me that's a very different tone.

Let the AG position sit vacant. It will take another year for the stench of Gonzales to leave the desk anyway. Let the field go fallow until the next president.

I weighed in earlier saying that, like Daniel_f my recollection of your Sep 16 post was of grudging support. I went back and looked. You definitely said he was at the far right and held views many Ds would find upsetting and possibly intolerable. I think part of what formed my impression was the different links in the Updates supporting your point that while he may be "very conservative" at least he had shown himself independent. And that was critical for the new AG.

I think what we see now is that perhaps the grudging conclusions of independence were premature. It seems pretty clear based on the torture testimony, that Mukasey isn't willing to buck the WH, despite his protestations that waterboarding is repugnant and that torture is illegal.

I wholeheartedly agree that it is amazing that we find ourselves in a situation where DC insiders D and R alike feel that views of this type are ok. McCain the tortured finds the most recent statements from Mukasey acceptable? WTF?

Am I wrong to note that you still have not posted whether you would support his confirmation? Or does "None of this is to say that he ought to be confirmed." mean that you oppose it?

Mukasey's refusal to say that the President is bound by statute - i.e., by the law - strikes at the heart of the Constitution, and is far more dangerous than his failure to classify waterboarding as torture, deplorable as that is. Yet we're not hearing a peep from Democrats about that issue.

I noted that response also. It seemed to me that Mukasey was essentially saying that, if the executive decided that a statute was unconstitutional (i.e. was passed by congress and signed by a president, but in this president's opinion was inconsistent with the president's article II powers), then the president would be acting lawfully to ignore the statute. Just ignore it.

If this is indeed what Mukasey meant, that is an extraordinary statement for a presumptive AG.

It was Leahy who was getting Mukasey on record on this subject, and he did so rather methodically and without much emotion. As with many such SJC hearings, one wonders when, if ever, the committee is actually going to act on any of these bizarre and just plain batty interpretations of what the executive branch can and can't do. It seems the president and his men and women can regularly call congress's bluff time after time, and the congress does nothing.

So what good are the hearings? Are they simply political theater, as the GOP claims? Will the only substative contribution from these hearings be in the formation of a record that historians can use 50 years from now?