CYA

MANIFESTO

While today's Times' story about Michael Mukasey's shortcomings as US Attorney General isn't exactly news, Chuck Schumer's reactions to his erstwhile fair haired boy might be.

[A]t a hearing this month, face to face with his pick for attorney general, Mr. Schumer ... did not hide his disappointment in what he saw as Mr. Mukasey’s reluctance to move more aggressively in investigating accusations that the Justice Department had brought politically inspired prosecutions against Democratic politicians.

Mr. Schumer was still fuming a short time later as he went to the Senate floor for a vote. “That was terrible,” Mr. Schumer told a colleague privately in assessing Mr. Mukasey’s performance, an official privy to the conversation said.

It's as if Schumer couldn't see this coming. Please.

As soon as Mukasey refused to admit that waterboarding was torture during his confirmation hearings, the bloom was off the rose, and it was clear that Mukasey would be just another Bush toadie, continuing the policies of Yoo, Gonzales, Cheney, and the rest of the felons. Yet, the provincial Schumer broke ranks with his fellow Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee and voted for him.

The final confirmation vote in the Senate was typical clandestine Republican nonsense, except that this time it was Harry Reid and the Democrats who were insisting on a vote in the dead of night.

Bottom line: Given the way the confirmation hearings went and the way the confirmation vote was handled, it should've surprised no one that Mukasey would turn out to be just another sycophant. For Charles Schumer to suddenly realize this is at best disingenuous.