If Judge Mukasey doesn't want to get people in trouble, has anybody explained to him the job description of the top prosecutor in the U.S.?

Why, damn it, did some Senator not make the obvious rejoinder: "This is not a matter of congeniality, Mr. Mukasey. This is not a tea party. You are appearing before the United States Senate, under oath, to show whether or not you are fit to hold the position of Attorney General of the United States. If you cannot or will not answer the question, you are clearly unfit for that position. Now answer the question, or go home."

...why do you delete polite letters that disagree with you?

When you write in to a comments section with nothing to do with what you're supposedly commenting on, and instead promote a separate blog, you are nothing but a spammer. Frankly, I think you're lucky your stuff isn't routinely deleted out of hand.

A man says he's pretty much aware torture may be getting authorized (well, ok, not torture but 'controversial interrogation techinques') but no Senator inquires into how he came about this knowledge.

What, or what is not, torture may be a gray area if only you're gray matter has left the building!

But for the entire Senate Judiciary Committe not to follow Mukasey's statements where they may lead....well, that's a sign of a dead body if there ever were one.

Smart money states Mukasey's confirmed. This part of the Senate is obviously too important being dead to suffer through properly nominating THE TOP LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL FOR THE ENTIRE FUCKING COUNTRY!!!

Based on seeing him at the hearings, one can conclude that the gentleman is in no danger of being found congenial.

A group of foreign nationals with ties to Mossad were seen filming and celebrating the 9/11 attacks in New York and then arrested. They were released immediately to return to the safety of their own nation by a U.S. Judge despite clear foreknowledge of the attacks. That judge? Mukasey.

In the 1993 truck bombing in the garage of the WTC, the International Herald Tribune reported that it was apparently a sting operation concocted by an FBI operative, a Mossad agent, and their Muslim patsy. (Various pieces of the story were in the mainstream media here, but never with connection of the dots.) The judge excluded any testimony revealing the sting, and the FBI operative and the Mossad agent (who appears to have built the bomb) were not charged. The judge was Michael Mukasey and the DOJ attorney in charge of the case was Michael Chertoff.

Of course it is anti-semitism to suggest that Israel does anything bad -- or that anyone in government would ever hypothetically overlook anything bad Israel did -- so I guess we all have to ignore this evidence (even though other convictions in the "war on terror" were based on softer evidence).

We helped to write those long standing Geneva Conventions Rules on water-boarding and other methods of torture. If the judge can't figure it out, then he is unfit for our Attorney General. He may want to apply elsewhere, say in Putin's new Russia.

Here's what makes me crazy.

Senate: Is waterboarding allowable under the Constitution?

Mukasey: [dissemble, hemming, hawing] If it were to meet the Constitutional definition of torture, it would not be allowed.

Senate: ....

Every time I've heard this bit of audio, I've been on the edge of my seat, grinding my teeth with frustration that the questioner did not immediately follow up with "Well DOES waterboarding meet the Constitutional definition of torture? IS IT TORTURE?"

Just. Ask. The. Question.

Mukasey has been nominated to be W's AG, so it wouldn't make much sense for him to contradict his future boss, would it? Even less so when Mukasey the Judge has let every form of torture pass as legitimate. To think of it, maybe that's why he was nominated. Which leads to the question, What's more deceptive, Mukasey's responses or liberals posturing about it?

The question is why Joan doesn't take Hillary to task for waffling on this ? So Joan, can I expect an update on Hillary's shameful wind vaneitis ? I smell a double standard.

Sounds to me like he went a long way around saying what Rudy said about whether using torture is right or wrong, "depends on who's doing it".

Joan, since Salon doesn't have an ombudsman, and since the letters are the only way of providing feedback, why do you delete polite letters that disagree with you?

Shame on you for support Carol Lloyd's defamation.

Mukasey's equivocation over whether waterboarding is torture, as others have already noted, is enough reason to reject him as a successor to Misfeasor Gonzalez.

But even before the hearings, it was reported that Sens. Schumer (who squired Mukasey around the Capitol) and Leahy had cut a deal with the WH to scale back investigations into suspect DOJ practices under Gonzalez in exchange for an "acceptable" AG nominee.

"Acceptable" obviously meant "someone who's not a well-known wingnut like Robert Bork or Ted Olson". Enter Mukasey.

I predicted that Mukasey would be confirmed in accordance with the above-cited quid pro quo. This would be preceded by the usual ruffles and flourishes, as we saw in the Alito and Roberts confirmation hearings. Democratic Senators profile, perform, and grandstand with "probing" questions to astonish and impress their dwindling fan base; the requisite number of Senators hem, haw, and harrumph, expressing "grave reservations" or "concerns" about certain questions.

Then the doubters finally pronounce themselves sufficiently satisfied that the nominee will be a suitable AG, and in he goes.

This contretemps over "waterboarding", as serious and substantial as it appears to be, is akin to a beauty pageant contestant stumbling on the runway during the fashion segment of the program. The crowd gasps, and for a split-second the contestant seems doomed. But the show goes on, and in this case our stumbler will not be denied the crown. Because the fix is in, and it would simply be too much trouble for both parties, who would rather just hustle this guy into office than go back to square one.

Principle has long since leached out of DC and the political elite; everything now is based on bipartisan conniving and expediency.