Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey’s confirmation hearings got underway this morning, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) explored Mukasey’s position on administration torture policies. His response was surprising.

Not only did Michael Mukasey repudiate the so-called 2002 “torture memo” signed by Office of Legal Counsel chief Jay Bybee — which appears to have survived in spirit, if not in letter — but he compared U.S. torture to the Holocaust. [...]

The Bybee memo is “worse than a sin, it’s a mistake,” Mukasey said. He referenced the photographs taken by U.S. troops who liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1945 to document the “barbarism” the U.S. opposed. “They didn’t do that so that we could then duplicate it ourselves.” Beyond legal restrictions barring torture clearly, torture is “antithetical to everything this country stands for.”

Greg Sargent had the same reaction I did — weren’t Republicans apoplectic when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said something similar two years ago?

One suspects the ensuing firestorm to Mukasey’s remarks will be a little less intense (which is to say, non-existent).

The vote went down by (surprise, surprise!) party lines...

The Gavel:

(T)he Judiciary Committee (held) a "Meeting to Consider: a Resolution and Report Recommending to the House of Representatives that Former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten be Cited for Contempt of Congress." Yesterday the Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers prepared a 52-page memo "that for the first time alleges specific ways that several administration officials may have broken the law during the multiple firings of U.S. attorneys."

Here is Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA29) urging the committee to vote for contempt:

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It would be one thing if the Administration witnesses came before this body and said on a particularlized basis that ‘I can't answer this question' or ‘I can't submit this document' because of a claim of Executive Privilege backed up by a letter from the President. That would be one thing. It would be another thing if a witnesses came into this committee room and said ‘I refuse to answer any question, I refuse to provide any document' with a claim of Executive Privilege. But it is yet even another thing for the Administration to take this position that with respect to a former Administration official: ‘I won't even come into the Congress, I won't even show up. I have that much contempt for the institution of Congress, I won't even come.' The audacity of that takes your breath away.

I wonder if they're doing this to avoid the scrutiny of Henry Waxman. They do have a long track record ripping off American taxpayers at the expense of the troops.

MSNBC:

U.S. oil services firm Halliburton Co. is moving its headquarters and chief executive to Dubai in a move that immediately sparked criticism from some U.S. politicians.

Texas-based Halliburton, which was led by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995-2000, did not specify what, if any, tax implications the move might entail. It plans to list on a stock exchange in the Middle East once it moves to Dubai — a booming commercial center in the Gulf. The company said it was making the moves to position itself better to gain contracts in the oil-rich Middle East.

“This is an insult to the U.S. soldiers and taxpayers who paid the tab for their no-bid contracts and endured their overcharges for all these years,” said judiciary committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.