digby writes: Ask yourself what kind of political movement and party can induce a highly respected former federal judge to publicly destroy his reputation and his soul to justify torture? Are those the kind of people who give up?
I didn't know then, and I don't know now, why someone like Mukasey should ever get the benefit of the doubt. America gets screwed every. single. time. So everyone is going to have to excuse me for not being entirely caught up in all the primary hooplah and continuing to fight the last war instead. Watching that hearing yesterday it was pretty hard to conclude that the Republicans have surrendered.
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also - from Glenn Greenwald:
. . . They learn Bush has been illegally spying on Americans with no warrants and they enact The Protect America Act to legalize it. They learn Bush has been systematically torturing detainees and imprisoning people with no process and they enact the Military Commissions Act to legalize it.
They learn that telecoms have deliberately broken the law for years-- laws which the Congress passed specifically to make it illegal for telecoms to cooperate with warrantless government spying on Americans-- and they are about to provide full retroactive immunity for the lawbreakers. When they do pretend to investigate, they meekly allow the administration literally to ignore their Subpoenas. Congress does that because we live in a system of lawlessness-- we have decided that the President has the power to break the law without consequences-- and because legalizing the President's lawbreaking is the only way they can be relevant.
I recall watching a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing back in 2002-- by which time it was evident that the administration was intent on invading Iraq. Joe Biden, the Committee's Chairman, was practically begging the administration to allow Congress to vote to authorize the invasion. Biden knew that Bush would invade Iraq regardless of whether there was Congressional authority, and so he pleaded with the administration to recognize that there was no need to proceed without a vote since, Biden promised, Congress would vote for the war.
Biden begged the administration to realize that it would be a Better War if Congress was permitted ceremoniously to endorse it. That's the only reason the administration sought a vote-- because Congress promised ahead of time that they would give the administration everything it wanted. That has become Congress' only role, its only power: to endorse what the President decrees.
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