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Read other letters about this article
A transcript of Mukasey's remarks for last night's speech at the Federalist Society, during which he collapsed and was taken to the hospital, has been posted by CBS and can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/569ql8
Here is a passage I found particularly interesting:
I focus on these types of criticisms not because they are so extraordinary, but because they are unfortunately so typical of people who substitute their policy views for any serious legal analysis and who would turn a good-faith legal disagreement into a battle over the purported existence or non-existence of the rule of law. The irony, of course, is that the law requires a serious analysis of text, precedent, and history, and it does not serve the rule of law to substitute a smug sense of outrage for that kind of analysis.
In fact, this Administration has displayed a strong commitment to the rule of law, with all that entails and I suspect, and I admit it is a suspicion tinged with hope, that the next Administration will maintain far more of this Administration's legal architecture than the intemperate rhetoric in some quarters would seem to suggest.
Mukasey is railing against the "casual" accusations that the Bush administration has had disdain for the Constitution and the rule of law. This passage comes off to me as simple projection, because anyone who has read UT over the last several years will see that it is the Bush administration that is substituting policy views for legal analysis. As the Salon radio interview with Scott Horton documented so well, the accusations against Bush and his minions are not hysterical, they are based on straightforward readings of the Constitution and Geneva Conventions.
Did the cognitive dissonance lead to his collapse?
I sincerely hope his prediction that Obama will leave much of the "legal architecture" in place is as wrong as the rest of his reasoning.
