From the all too appropriately named political blog Morons.org [2], Nov. 12:
We apparently have a new Attorney General....
Last Thursday, Judge Michael Mukasey was confirmed as Attorney General by the Senate in a vote [3]of 53-40 in the dead of night, at 11:04PM. This happened just two days after Mukasey was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, making it an unusually quick confirmation. So quick, in fact, that none of the Senators running for President were able to return to Washington in time to vote on it. So quick that no one had any time to arrange a filibuster, should they have desired to block the nomination.So what possessed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to allow this to happen? Reid wanted to pass [4]the $459 billion Defense Appropriations Bill, which doesn't fund Afghanistan or Iraq (that will be handled separately), and so he cut a deal with the Republican leadership (the Defense bill was passed later that night). Alright, but why was the Democratic leadership so keen on passing this bill that they would torpedo any chance to stop Mukasey's nomination? Because they were afraid Republicans might attack them for not supporting the troops.
This is amazingly stupid. No matter how many times Democrats have caved on Iraq and on military spending, Republicans have always attacked Democrats for not "supporting the troops." They will do it no matter what Democrats do, so making any concessions in the vain hope that such attacks might be prevented is simply foolish and cowardly. Back during the Watergate scandal, Democrats were able to extract a promise to appoint a special prosecutor from a new Attorney General nominee for the purposes of investigating illegal actions by the President. The current Democratic leadership won't even take a stand against torture [5], TORTURE, because they're afraid Republicans might call them bad names.
I don't know about you, but this isn't what I voted for last year. Harry Reid needs to be replaced as Majority Leader with someone who isn't afraid to, you know, stand for something.
We couldn't have put it any better ourselves... except that we at WW4 REPORT never had enough faith in the Democrats to be disillusioned...
See our last post on the torture state [6].
