Jailed Governor Needs Another Day in Court

With the nomination of retired federal judge Michael Mukasey, there's fresh hope that the U.S. Justice Department can be cleansed before the end of the Bush administration.

Veteran lawyers without a leader they respect at Justice say it may be sunny and 80 degrees outside, but it feels like a morgue inside. They feared that the resignation of Alberto Gonzales, defended by Bush to his last ``I don't recall,'' would put the president in his bring-it-on mode. And for a while it did, as Bush floated the names of movement conservatives caught up in party politics.

Yet the president got the message that many in his own party had grown weary of defending the indefensible and wanted a respectable nominee. After a couple of false starts, Bush sent up the name of a widely regarded jurist he'd never met before.

Mukasey is no civil liberties champ, but Senator Charles Schumer of New York is for him. He's not exactly a rock-ribbed conservative, but Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah is in his corner. Is he the right man for a wholesale makeover at Justice? The building is warming up already.

Much of what Mukasey, 66, has to do -- fix the kangaroo courts that are trying lawyer-less enemy combatants, restore the Geneva Conventions that Gonzales thought ``quaint'' -- is slow and complicated. But there's one issue he could address swiftly that would send a clear message that the department will no longer be driven by narrow ideology and the worst sort of politics. I refer to the case of the former Democratic governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman.

Read the whole column here.

Comments

[bhougen]

I don't know about Mukasey. Anyone that Bush says is fit to serve should be looked into with great attention payed to detail. He's also a long-time friend of Giuliani and contributed $10,000 to his presidential campaign, which makes me unsure of what the two would do if Giuliani (dare I suggest it) was elected.
He dosn't believe that regular criminal courts are sufficient when it comes to trying terrorism cases. I don't know about this guy.

[bmermaid]

This stuff is more like Watergate all the time, in that most American voters, even political news junkies, don't know about the details and don't understand what it all means.

But keep on rolling it out. It's depressing, but not as depressing as when this Administration was getting an automatic pass on every single dispicable thing that they did.

[marvc]

I won't be holding my breath waiting for Mukasey to take on this issue. Siegleman is a Rove target and as such, no good Republican would dare to go against the Brain.

Needless to say, we cannot count on our elected Democratic Congresscritters to do anything either. Hell, they can't even figure out how to end this freaking occupation of Iraq, even though cutting off funding would be the easiest way to do it. Sad day for Democracy. Sad day for our Democratic party. Would that we had true leaders instead of Pelosi and Reid! What a disappointment they have been. I sometimes wish I was a resident of Pelosi's CD so I could vote against her just to assuage my own conscience. Not that she would care one bit. Maybe when we elect a new Prez in 2008 we can get a Presidential Pardon for Siegelman.