Digital Brainwaves

I don’t believe it.

Seriously, I can’t believe I’m doing this.

I have to commend Chuck Schumer, because he did the right thing.

The confirmation of Judge Michael Mukasey to the post of Attorney General of the United States shouldn’t have anything to do with whether he thinks waterboarding is torture or not. It has everything to do with whether he upholds the law.

Sen. Schumer may not like that Mukasey won’t explicitly define waterboarding as torture, but frankly, it’s not Mukasey’s decision to make, it’s that of Congress, which Schumer noted in his statement endorsing the nominee’s confirmation:

In his statement Friday pledging continued support for Mukasey’s nomination, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., offered this significant (and significantly under-reported) nugget. Mukasey, Schumer wrote, “made clear to me [in private] that, were Congress to pass a law banning certain interrogation techniques, we would clearly be acting within our constitutional authority. And he flatly told me that the President would have absolutely no legal authority to ignore such a law, not even under some theory of inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution. He also pledged to enforce such a law and repeated his willingness to leave office rather than participate in a violation of law.”

Mukasey’s viewpoint on it, then, boils down to this: “My job would be a legal one, not a moral one. I may or may not have a problem with waterboarding, but it’s not illegal as the law is written, and can’t recommend against it on those grounds. If you want me to tell the President not to do it, you make it illegal.”

It’s exactly the right viewpoint for an Attorney General to have. Sen. Schumer is doing the right thing by supporting the confirmation on the grounds that, while they may not agree on issues, the nominee would perform his job to the letter of the law.