BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

From THIS SITE : Greg Mitchell of Legal Pad has had some time to scan the 140-page report on the DOJ investigation into whether the White House illegally used political criteria to disqualify candidates for career positions at Justice. (It's not against the law to do this for positions classified as political appointments, but it is against the law as to positions to be filled by career civil servants. 5 U.S.C. §§ 2301 & 2302.) The report's shocking conclusion: it did. While not much is funny about that, investigators did find this amusing Lexis/Nexis search string that was used to dig into candidates' backgrounds. Some cynics claim this string shows that political criteria were being considered, but you decide: [first name of a candidate] and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or...

US Senate Declares Torture "Peachy," Confirms Mukasey as "Grand Inquisitor" by Bob Higgins Waterboarding is now as "American" as "Mom" and "apple pie" The "distinguished jurist" told them in open hearings and in written communications that he could not call waterboarding "torture," and reportedly, pravately expressed his fear that doing so might open the gates for some executive department and military officials to lawsuits or criminal prosecution. Notice here that what is important to this "distinguished jurist" is not the fact that the laws of the United States regarding the use of torture may have been violated by highly placed government officials, or that subordinates were directed to violate the law, but that those officials must somehow be shielded from civil or criminal sanction. No matter that the practice known as waterboarding has been around far longer than any of the doddering graybeards in the...

Michael B. Mukasey and the Sanctification of Depravity It looked like the nomination of Michael B. Mukasey was on the ropes because he refused to condemn the use of waterboarding. This brought a small ripple of outrage from the senate judicial committee and the nomination seemed DOA. That was until the democrats rode to the rescue by caving. All of a sudden, sen. Chuck Schumer (d. NY) and sen. Diane Feinstein (d. Calif.) announced they would support him, thus assuring his confirmation by the committee. Their reason is telling: It seems Mukasey promised them that if congress passed a law banning harsh interrogation methods, he would enforce it. Mind you, we are talking about a law that would include signing statements, interpretations, rulings, parsing and convoluted definitions of just what constitutes harsh interrogation methods. And this assumes that congress would pass such a law, which will they never will because banning harsh interrogation methods would make the democrats app...