Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

Mukasey as A.G. updated

A Reagan appointee, serving 19 years on the federal bench, Judge Mukasey is
now Bush’s nominee for attorney general. He also spent four years as an assistant
U.S. attorney. Glenn weighs in:

I want to highlight one extremely relevant consideration concerning Judge Mukasey — the impressive role he played in presiding over the Jose Padilla case in its earliest stages. After Padilla was first detained in April 2002 and declared an “enemy combatant,” he was held incommunicado, denied all access to the outside the world, including counsel, and the Bush administration refused to charge him with any crimes. A lawsuit was filed on Padilla’s behalf by a New York criminal defense lawyer, Donna Newman, demanding that Padilla be accorded the right to petition for habeas corpus and that, first, he be allowed access to a lawyer. That lawsuit was assigned to Judge Mukasey, which almost certainly made the Bush DOJ happy. But any such happiness proved to be unwarranted. Judge Mukasey repeatedly defied the demands of the Bush administration, ruled against them, excoriated them on multiple occasions for failing to comply with his legally issued orders, and ruled that Padilla was entitled to contest the factual claims of the government and to have access to lawyers. He issued these rulings in 2002 and 2003, when virtually nobody was defying the Bush administration on anything, let alone on assertions of executive power to combat the Terrorists. And he made these rulings in the face of what was became the standard Bush claim that unless there was complete acquiescence to all claimed powers by the President, a Terrorist attack would occur and the blood would be on the hands of those who impeded the President. … .. Michael Mukasey’s role in the Jose Padilla case

As I said earlier, I wanted anyone but Ted Olson, and thanks to Harry
Reid drawing a line we didn’t get him.

In a statement issued last night, the senator was somewhat guarded. “For sure we’d want to ascertain his approach on such important and sensitive issues as wiretapping and the appointment of US attorneys, but he’s a lot better than some of the other names mentioned and he has the potential to become a consensus nominee,” the statement said. Judge Mukasey emerged as the leading candidate only in the past week. The Associated Press last night reported that Mr. Bush would announce him today as the nominee. Earlier in the week, a leading Supreme Court attorney under consideration by the White House, Theodore Olson, was pronounced unconfirmable by the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. .. …

Senator Schumer has praised Mukasey, as have many others, but that doesn’t mean
he shouldn’t be asked questions. So this
analysis is just silly.

More than that let me say that Bush is president and he’s going to name a conservative.
That’s just reality.

Jeralyn:

… Mukasey has bucked the Government in several cases, and I’ve found nothing to suggest he will be the Administration’s water boy. Mukasey is a far better pick than Ted Olson or, for that matter, a career prosecutor who grew up under Ashcroft and Gonzales. While he’s been politically supportive of his pal Giuliani and Joe Lieberman, it sounds like he’s more interested in law than politics. That’s what the Justice Department needs right now.