Panel Clears Mukasey Nomination
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — The Judiciary Committee voted to advance the attorney general nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey to the Senate floor today, virtually ensuring his confirmation before Thanksgiving.
The 11-8 vote came after two key Democrats accepted his vow to enforce any law Congress might enact against waterboarding.
However, the chairman of the committee, Senator Leahy called Judge Mukasey’s promise disingenuous. “Unsaid, of course, is the fact that any such prohibition would have to be enacted over the veto of this president,” Mr. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.
Senator Schumer, who suggested Judge Mukasey to the White House in the first place, countered that the nominee’s statements against waterboarding and for purging politics from the Justice Department amount to the best deal Democrats could get from the Bush administration.
“If we block Judge Mukasey’s nomination and then learn in six months that waterboarding has continued unabated, that victory will seem much less valuable,” he wrote in an op-ed in today’s editions of The New York Times.
Announcements of support for Judge Mukasey by Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Senator Feinstein, Democrat of California, virtually assured the former federal judge the majority vote he needed to be favorably recommended by the committee. He was expected to win confirmation handily in the full Senate, where a vote is likely before Thanksgiving.
In tightly choreographed statements of support last week, Ms. Feinstein and Mr. Schumer essentially eliminated the chance that Democrats could kill the nomination in committee.
Many Democrats came out in opposition to Judge Mukasey after he refused to say unequivocably that so-called waterboarding — an interrogation technique that simulates drowning — is tantamount to torture and thus illegal under domestic and international law.
Judge Mukasey rankled Democrats during his confirmation hearing by saying he was not familiar with the waterboarding technique and could not say whether it was torture.
Judge Mukasey later sought to allay those concerns with a letter calling waterboarding “repugnant.”
Legal experts cautioned that if Judge Mukasey called it torture, that effectively could have constituted an admission that America engaged in war crimes. It could also commit him to prosecuting American officials even before he takes office.
