Comments on: Mukasey to Obama: “This is how the game is played”

By: john2

john2 — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:50:54 +0000

“Mukasey is definitely up to something . . . but the question is “What?”

Distraction tactics, the hallmark of the Bush presidency. Mukasey’s statement is intended to lower expectations for pardons. But come Xmas eve, Bush will grant wholesale pardons to all the administration’s bad actors.

The last thing Bushco wants is further scrutiny, and all actions will be directed to that end. All the bad actors will develop massive collective amnesia about every single question asked.

By: leftdcin72

leftdcin72 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:48:18 +0000

It’s kind of uh duh here. Mukasey would not be talking if Bush were going to issue pardons. Mukasey is after the fact of Bush’s decision not to pardon. Obama is not going to authorize any criminal investigation, that’s for sure. He is not going to become the Ken Starr of torture or allow anyone in his administration to do so. There will be a commission to investigate and that is as far as it will go.

By: Gregg Levine

Gregg Levine — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:12:15 +0000

Wouldn’t that actually be direct confirmation that the ‘rule of law’ & the ‘government of laws, not men’ is in fact stone cold dead. . .

Pretty much, yeah.

Again, not saying that I agree with my theoretical BHO rationale, just saying that is what I think they are thinking.

I think that their thinking is wrong.

By: dcblogger

dcblogger — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:05:32 +0000

Obama appointed Gates, a very very bad sign. Any prosecution for war crimes will likely come from abroad.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:40:11 +0000

That is an apple and oranges argument. The Nazis could just as easily have said, Hey we have this office called Das OLC and it said it was legally OK to conduct the Holocaust. Now you might want to see Das OLC’s legal opinion but you wouldn’t need it to try those who committed the Holocaust because any such opinion would lack any validity or content.

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:35:59 +0000

87 – I think they would take a role, but it is a very different thing (or should be, would have been, once upon a time) to 1) have a one on one bare knuckle advocacy in a court proceeding with an impartial (don’t laugh) magistrate constrained by rules of law (don’t laugh harder) dating back hundreds of years vs. to 2) have a political investigations, by politicians who have none of the victims in their political base, or by people appointed by such politicians, playing out in a public forum where all the rules are up for grabs as the polticians mold them and where criminal culpability can be cratered by political grants of immunity and where the primary purpose/interest of the whole of the proceeding will be to make those in power look good and be able to keep power or those out of power be able to squeeze and seize, and where the actual crimes and victims have such a peripheral role as to be nonenetities. JMO.

By: looseheadprop

looseheadprop — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:33:28 +0000

Woot!

Thank YOU!

And thank Scott

By: dakine01

dakine01 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:33:27 +0000

Ian’s a few flights upstairs

By: looseheadprop

looseheadprop — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:31:59 +0000

I’d love to learn of the emails and conversations which took place to SET UP the writing of these memoranda.

As would I, though somehow I doubt that Addington was as stupid as Goodling and Schloz and put things like that in an email. Hell, he wouldn’t even let the NSA opinion sit in a vault at DOJ, he kept it in his own vault.

I suspect tha most communications about this took plaese in Addingtons Scif

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:31:49 +0000

God love Scott Horton - he has a hot off the press blog item up that makes a nice glove for your piece, lhp.

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90003957

Horton highlights calls for criminal investigations and goes again to Mukasey’s claim that a good faith belief you are acting for the benefit of national security is a good and valid defense to any crime:

He supposes that it is a defense for a criminally accused person to say he tortured in the interests of national security. But in fact torturers who have been prosecuted by the United States in the past have made just this sort of claim, and the courts have held, correctly, that the claim is unavailable.

And he points out that Conyers and Nadler have already responded:

House Judiciary Chair John Conyers and Subcommittee Chair Jerry Nadler are calling Mukasey on his statements. They note that the public record is full of evidence showing that the Justice Department opinion writers were warned that they were attempting the legitimize criminal acts and that their opinions would not withstand public scrutiny.

And despite the DOJ penchant for Nifongesque pressers, dating to at least the Comey/Padilla presser, Conyers and Nadler also raise the issue of appropriateness, maybe even the legal ethics and professional conduct issues:

The House Judiciary leaders also question why Mukasey is making these bald categorical and unsubstantiated statements when investigations are now pending with respect to the matters on which he is speaking. Mukasey is prejudging those matters and appears to be attempting to head-off a professional and complete investigation by prosecutors who answer to him.