...why Congress cannot hold Mukasey in contempt of Congress for such a blatantly wrong and illegal stance? Can you even imagine what would happen if you or I did any such thing? The SWAT team would be ramming our doors down and dragging us to jail in about 14 seconds....

Excuse me while I go vomit.

And Congress will give him a pass.

It's increasingly evident why the Democrat-controlled Congress' approval rating is consistently lower than even Bush.

Who knew they'd turn out top be the biggest obstructionists of all?

Remember when she said she took an oath to the President? I thought Leahy was going to explode:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003656.php

but -- thanks not only to the Bush administration but also to one of the most derelict Congresses in history -- that view also now accurately reflects the reality of how the Government actually functions.--GG

Thanks also to a derelict Dan Abrams, and so many other in the "journalistic" profession, for not immediately calling him out.

Wow! Let's all be sure we contact those great Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein and thank them for insuring we have good old 'independent' AG Mukasey.

that he's a slicker, smarter, and more high handed and contemptuous individual than any previous Bushevik AG.

The surprise is that this is a surprise.

I have a very hard time believing that Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, his primary proponents in the Senate, didn't know exactly what they were getting with Mukasey. And I have an even harder time believing he isn't exactly what they wanted.

A slicker, smarter, and even more contemptuous AG. That's what he appeared to be at his confirmation hearing -- to anyone who was paying the least bit of attention.

What may be a surprise is that apparently he wasn't this way on the Federal bench. Or was he?

Was there really no hint then that he was so disinclined to support the law and the Constitution? Or were his peculiarities on the bench considered to be in the mainstream of jurisprudence and therefore not worthy of comment? We've had so many years of right wing ideologues and monarchists elevated to the Federal bench that a ringer like Mukasey might not seem out of the ordinary at all any more, even though, as we see him in the AG role, his views and beliefs and actions are outrageous.

It's funny that conservatives took the exact opposite approach towards the Justice Department and the AG during Clinton's time in office. I seem to recall it was conservatives loudly emphasizing, with the media's full support, that Janet Reno shouldn't be Clinton's lawyer but should be independent (which I think she mostly was, but not enough for Republican tastes at the time).

Who was it that said the political establishment is aligning against the citizenry? Oh, yeah. Glenn Greenwald.

Another disturbing example.

Who represents the people's interests?

Only the people themselves.

Isn't there any grounds for recalling or impeaching a government official who so fundamentally misunderstands the core premise and requirement of the position?

So, this is the (il)logical and (ir)rational extension of the "unitary Executive" that Cheney and others of his ilk envisioned after watching John Mitchell go up in flames attempting to protect Richard Nixon. And, as Mukasey has refused to hand over material, is it the case that he and the DOJ (and by extension, thousands of govermental agencies) are being rolled up under the umbrella of executive privilege?

Now that's a Big House!

I won't be happy until these scum are serving time in the big house for what they have done to this country.

Shrub has consistently used business-speak throughout his reign. Implicit in his use of the term "customer" instead of citizen is the concept of unequal representation or standing. Like the rest of his life, he and his peers have been more equal than the little people.

Particualrly directed at those younger than me:

Do they teach Constitutional Civics in school anymore? When I was in High Scool in the seventies, they wouldn't let you graduate until you had taken and passed a "Constitution Test" I seem to remember having to pass an easier version in 8th grade as well. Did they discontinue that practice? If so, when?

If that's the case, then perhaps one of the more lasting and important contributions we could make to our Country is at the local level, encouraging our school boards to add this rather important subject BACK into our curriculums.

Again, do these people reaaly intend to give over all these new, twisted powers to Obama?

Or will all of a sudden sanity prevail?

Even McCain was smart enought to point out that when the R's were in the majority and trying to change the rules to suppress the minority Dems in the Senate, that things have a way of turning and that the R's might be the minority party again sometime in the future. It was one of the times he was actually being a "maverick" that the conservatives hated him for.

[Glenn, from the post]: That's why a former White House official and top right-wing activist like Blakeman can go on television and simply proclaim (without anyone contradicting him) that the President is the Attorney General's "client" and that whatever the Attorney General does to protect the President is accordingly justified in the same way that a standard lawyer's duty is to protect "his client's" interests.

... is that by dint of being the preznit's consiglie... -- umm, sorry, "attorney" -- and also being the nation's top prosecutor, Mukasey gets to be both prosecution and defence lawyer at the same time. Makes for much shorter pre-trial conferences, and a streamlined DoJ, at great savings to us all. Hip-hip-hooray! My rebate's in the mail....

Cheers,

As Republicans continue to flout the law, what legal powers can Democrats summon?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-linda-sanchez/why-karl-rove-should-go-t_b_113417.html

Karl Rove refused a subpoena. How can this happen?

A subpoena is backed by the force of law, which means at some fundamental point there is the implied threat of violence to enforce that law, that there's some "cop" somewhere. How would this work in practice?