The question remains, what if they did it to your son or daughter

Michael Mukasey answered hundreds of questions, on record, and in writing, to try to secure his nomination as Attorney General. Among them are his response to the question "Is waterboarding torture." As expected he danced around the issue, and in the end, refused to acknowledge that it is.

As I've said before, a simple reframing of the quesiton might solicit a different answer.

So, Judge Mukasey, would waterboarding be torture if they did it to your son Marc, or your daughter Jessica?

Threats, threats and more threats

Those scary Democrats are threatening to block the nomination of Attorney General nominee Mukasey.

I'm sure the Bush administration is quaking.

Unfortunately Democratic Senators have threatened before, and still we have FISA and war funding.

I'm about ready to see the Dems finally make good on a threat.

That's more like it

We're so used to Bush nominees who twist reality into a charade of the truth, that yesterday, we watched Attorney General nominee Mukasey and hoped dreamily that he was the exception.

When he reverted to tautology in answering the committee's questions about what constituted torture, he began to dance down the lane of infinite regress often traveled by Bush associates.

Good for RI's Senator Sheldon Whitehouse for putting the screws to Mukasey. One more example of why Whitehouse's defeat of moderate Republican Lincoln Chafee was so important.

Cut from the same cloth

While there's been a sense that Bush's nominee to replace Al Gonzales, Michael Mukasey, may be a candidate who could win approval, it seems he may be as much of an autocrat as his those he's succeeding.

I hope that the Democratic Congress can see this approval process as an opportunity to air Republican dirty laundry, and to forced the Bush administration to shed some light on the dirty secrets of the Gonzales era.