The "Consensus" That Isn't There

I hadn’t really given much of a though to Michael Mukasey, the retired federal judge from New York nominated by Dubya as the next Attorney General to replace Abu Gonzales. Maybe, for some reason, the fact that Sen. Charles Schumer of New York approved of him made me blow off any examination of Mukasey until today.

(Of course, Schumer has also rejected the idea of making fund managers pay a tax rate of 35 percent, the ordinary tax rate, on “carried interest,” as opposed to the nominal 15 percent rate they presently pay when declaring the income as capital gains, even though many Democrats approve it; this is tantamount to an undeserved windfall for these people, though Schumer – erroneously, I think – believes raising the tax would lead to an exodus of high-paying jobs from Wall Street and perhaps the country…I’m willing to take that chance if it means more funding for health care and our schools).

Fortunately, though, the New York Times took a closer look at Mukasey today in this editorial. And that made me do a little digging.

And I’m starting to wonder if this guy could somehow be more dangerous that what we had (picture ‘Berto with brains).

And let’s dispense with the “conventional wisdom,” shall we? Like you, I’ve seen a bunch of articles already stating that Mukasey is some kind of a “consensus” pick since Dubya believes he is weakened and the Dems would quite rightly fight over Ted Olson and he doesn’t want to give the Dems another weapon of sorts heading into the elections next year, blah blah blah (and how’s this for a glowing narrative courtesy of the AP? Did Mukasey grow up in a log cabin and split rails too?).

Flush all of that. Dubya wouldn’t have picked this guy unless he was a “made man.” And that comes through loud and clear in the following examples concerning The Patriot Act (in a speech available from here, and note the source of course).

First, Mukasey describes the following provisions in the act…

Most of the provisions have nothing to do with the current debate, including provisions authorizing purchase of equipment for police departments and the like, and provisions tightening restrictions on money laundering, including restrictions on the export of currency, which is the lifeblood of terrorists. Recall that when Saddam Hussein was captured, he had with him $750,000 in $100 bills.

Nice sleight of hand there to imply an association between Hussein and the jihadists that didn’t exist, Your Honor.

Also, Mukasey has the following to say about the highly controversial Section 215 of The Patriot Act…

My favorite example is the well-publicized resolution of the American Library Association condemning what the librarians claim to believe is a section of the statute that authorizes the FBI to obtain library records and to investigate people based on the books they take out (Section 215). Some of the membership have announced a policy of destroying records so that they do not fall into the hands of the FBI.

First a word on the organization that gives us this news. The motto of this organization is "Free people read freely." When it was called to their attention that there are 10 librarians languishing in Cuban prisons for encouraging their fellow countrymen to read freely, an imprisonment that has been condemned by Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel, among others, this association declined to vote any resolution of condemnation, although they did find time at their convention to condemn their own government.

As always with Bushco partisans, the best defense is a good offense (and the more offensive, the better).

In addition to the library association, many towns and villages across the country, notably Berkeley, Calif., and Amherst, Mass., have announced that they will not cooperate with any effort to gather evidence under the statute. A former vice president has called for the statute's repeal, and a former presidential candidate has called the act "morally wrong," "shameful" and "unconstitutional."

That was Mukasey’s spin on Section 215. Here is the reality from the ACLU (as you can read, Section 215 of the act violates at least three amendments to the Constitution: the first, fourth, and fifth).

And the freeper demagoguery doesn’t stop there, boys and girls; Mukasey provides this version of how 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi escaped capture and ended up murdering Americans on that awful day…

What difference would (the Patriot Act) make? Well, there is one documented incident involving an FBI intelligence agent on the West Coast who was trying to find two men on a watch list who he realized had entered the country. He tried to get help from the criminal investigative side of the FBI, but headquarters intervened and said that was not allowed. That happened in August 2001. The two men he was looking for were named Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. A few weeks later, on Sept. 11, they were at the controls of the airplane that struck the Pentagon. This provision of the statute, permitting information sharing, could not pass Congress without an agreement that it would sunset on Dec. 31, 2005, and so unless that provision is changed, come Jan. 1, 2006, we will be back to the rules that prevailed in August 2001.

Here is the reality, from Time Magazine reporter Robert Baer…

One problem was that communications between FBI and CIA headquarters is ad hoc — usually by telephone, sometimes by a classified telex. An FBI agent assigned to the CIA wrote a telex to the FBI about al-Hazmi and al-Midhar but for reasons that are still unclear it was never sent. There was no mechanism to register the lapse, or that the FBI in fact did not have al-Midhar and al-Hazmi under coverage. The ball was dropped.

The problems were easily correctible. For instance, had the CIA field station in East Asia been able to send a telex directly to FBI headquarters in Washington or FBI field offices in California, where al-Hazmi and al-Midhar ended up, the FBI no doubt would have launched a full field investigation and almost certainly found out about the other 17 hijackers. The chances are the FBI would have stopped 9/11.

The CIA IG's report says there was no "silver bullet" that would have prevented 9/11. I disagree; this was it.

If Mukasey is willing to stand up in front of a bunch of ideological fellow travelers and peddle this crap, then how on earth can we possibly expect him to be impartial in administering the functions of his office (to say nothing of pursuing the pipe dream of ferreting out DOJ corruption and politicization…please).

If confirmed, business as usual will prevail for Bushco. Let us proceed with that knowledge in mind and act accordingly (you can contact your elected representatives from here).

In the meantime, Charles Schumer can pull his head out of his ass (and based on the quote from this story, Harry Reid can do the same thing).