Schumer Sticks With Michael Mukasey, Feels "Almost Betrayed" by John Roberts
In an interview with Chuck Schumer for a story in tomorrow's Observer, the senator said he still stands by the present nominee for the Attorney General position, Michael Mukasey, because he believes Mukasey will be politically independent from the Bush administration.
Since Schumer introduced Mukasey, a fellow New Yorker, at the confirmation hearings, the nominee has stumbled in his responses about torture and the legal extent of presidential power. Presidential candidates Chris Dodd and Barack Obama have since said that they will vote against Mukasey in the Senate, potentially putting pressure on other candidates to follow suit.
But Schumer isn't budging yet.
"I'm going to give him the chance to put in detail what he means," said Schumer, referring to Mukasey's somewhat convoluted answer about torture.
The most important thing, Schumer said, is that Mukasey maintains his independence. "As long as he continues to project that I think he'll be confirmed," Schumer said.
I also asked him to assess the Roberts Supreme Court so far.
"I feel almost betrayed by Roberts," he said. "Because he said to us in all sincerity and earnestness that he believed in modesty he believed in stare decisis. This court has done more to overturn things and change things than any in recent memory. How could he have said what he said to us and the led the court to do this?"
- Poll
- Obama (D)
- McCain(R)
- Spread
- RCP Average
- 47.7
- 43.8
- Obama +3.9
- Candidate
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- Obama
- 54.3
- 34.4
- +19.9
- McCain
- 51.7
- 36.3
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Senator Charles Schumer says he feels betrayed by the performance of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts a believer in outrageous overreach by law enforcement even in ordinary circumstances and a subscriber to the crackpot theory of an imperial American President. One hopes Schumer is being ironic and that that experience has taught his colleagues who supported Roberts’ nomination the worth of a confirmation conversion as pressure builds for Michael Mukasey to make a well publicized carefully parsed back peddle and further obscure his positions. How can the United States have become a country with a supreme leader and confusion about what torture is? Was the rule of law only good as a standard as long as the threat was Over There? It seems just as we are told the US is facing the greatest test of values in a generation we are lead by politicians only good at covering themselves with glories of past struggles they no longer even try to live up to.
Time has passed since Ed Ellis' comment and time has proven that Senator Chuck Schumer's feelings of betrayal did absolutely nothing to diminish his gullibility. He swallowed the Mukasey confirmation hearing testimony hook, line and sinker. Unfortunately, we will all sink having defenders of the rule of law of this ilk. I will pass on any comment about Nancy Pelosi as she goes beyond the pale in her unending desire to play the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkey.