Crooks and Liars

Monday October 29, 2007 11:28 am

Is the Fourth Amendment Just a Guideline?

By Nicole Belle

Michael Mukasey appears to think so:

US Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey has written a very lawyerly letter to the Senate Judiciary committee. The letter fails to use the word "waterboarding" although the acceptance of a cast-iron prohibition on "torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" might fairly be seen to cover banning it. The letter might be enough to peel off a few votes on the torture issue.

If you read the letter with any care, however, you will see that it very carefully refuses to say that - even in the face of the FISA legislation occupying the field - the the law can place any limits on a President who decides to wiretap US citizens, in the US, without a warrant, so long as he decides he wants to and is willing to wave the bloody shirt of national security.[..]

If the Senate confirms him after this, they're complicit in undermining the Constitution. Again.

Yup. Don't be silent. Let your Senators know how you feel about Mukasey's confirmation