Michael Mukasey's clearheaded confirmation hearing before the Senate today was a remarkable contrast to Alberto Gonzales's months of crazy-making double-talk.
He totally wowed them...just by making sense (he repudiated torture without just redefining it; he acknowledged that Guantanamo is a disaster). It's too bad the bar is set so low.
UPDATE:Thursday was not encouraging. Sheldon Whitehouse asked Mukasey "Do you have an opinion whether waterboarding–which is the practice of putting someone in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning–is that constitutional?"
Mukasey: "If that amounts to torture, it is not constitutional."
So Mukasey wants to consult some secret, shifting definition of the word "torture" that's determined by the torturers themselves? Lame. What matters is whether it feels like torture when it happens to you. (Hint: it would.)
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