Vermont Public Radio aired an interview this morning with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). As you likely know, Leahy is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as such has more power over the fate of the nominee for US Attorney General than any other senator (if you didn't know that, let me be the first to say "Welcome to DailyKos!").
It appears that the chairman is having more than a little trouble holding his rubber stamp.
It even appears Mr. Leahy is not ready to take Dick Cheney's advice.
More below
As many have posted here, there were several red flags during the two days of hearings into Mukasey's nomination, but the one that is troubling Leahy the most is the torture issue; specifically the about-face Mukasey executed between the first and second days of the hearings.
From the VPR interview:
After the first hearing, Leahy said he was pleased that Mukasey testified that he wants to be an independent Attorney General and that Mukasey would resign if asked by the White House to support any actions that he believed were unconstitutional.
But on the second day, Leahy says Mukasey seemed to backtrack on his firm stand against the use of torture and whether or not the President has the authority to ignore certain laws in the interest of national security:
Almost makes a paranoiac wonder if somebody from the White House gave a call to the nominee and told him that his first day's testimony was "no longer operable".
The chairman, methinks, smells a rat. He has submitted a number of questions to Mukasey in an attempt to get "definitive answers" regarding what is torture.
"I'm not going to even bring it to a vote until I get some kind of a definitive answer. And his answer I think is going to very much determine what my vote is - and, I suspect, what the vote of others is going to be."
This is a very hopeful sign, and could signal that the Mukasey nomination is in more trouble than has been portrayed until now. Yesterday, Vermont's freshman senator, Bernie Sanders, announced his intention to vote against Mukasey for his stance against civil liberties. Bernie can be counted on to do the right thing nearly 100% of the time, but Leahy, with his decades in office, seems to be more circumspect more deferential kinda lost when the bushco hardballs really start flying. For instance, he has not voiced much concern that the new AG agrees with the Authoritarians that bush can break laws for "national security reasons", and apparently also has no problem with Mukasey continuing the policy of stonewalling Congress over lawful congressional subpoenas, some of which were issued by the very same Senate Judiciary Committee.
I wrote my esteemed senator to remind him of these other glaring problems with the nominee. If you would like to amplify such sentiments,
here is the SJC membership list,
here is Senator Leahy's contact info, and
here is the list of all US senators.
We have won precious few battles against the ultimate paper tiger administration, but some of those wins have been in unexpected places. Let's try keeping another willing torturer and cover-up artist out of the top spot at DoJ.