Cross-posted on The Hill Blog.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) said it best today as the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey as attorney general

"He will, in fact, enforce the laws that we pass in the future?" Kennedy said, mocking the assurances Mukasey gave to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) that he would enforce an anti-torture law if Congress were to pass one. "Can our standards have really sunk so low? Enforcing the law is the job of the attorney general. It's a prerequisite, not a virtue."

Enforcing the law is even more important in a Justice Department that has been badly damaged by an attorney general who put partisan loyalty above the rule of law. The nation cannot afford to have that happen again. Yet by refusing to be clear in his answers on whether he considers waterboarding illegal, Mukasey gives no assurance that he would do anything differently than his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales.

Common Cause is urging the full Senate to vote AGAINST Murkasey's confirmation, and the organization is far from alone.

Four retired Judge Advocates General (JAGs), the legal arm of the U.S. military, declared unequivocally in a letter to Sen Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) that "waterboarding is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal." Twenty-four retired US intelligence officers have also weighed in, asking that the Senate Judiciary Committee hold the nomination until Mukasey clarifies his remarks. Four retired generals have also written to Leahy, agreeing that water boarding is illegal torture in all circumstances.

Judge Mukasey's disingenuous responses about torture show a contempt for Congress and a disturbing willingness to turn his back on the law when the alternative - acknowledging illegal torture - could have troubling implications for the President who nominated him.

The Senate should do the right thing for the country and for the beleaguered Justice Department and reject Mukasey and continue searching for a suitable nominee.

Somewhat lost in all the last-minute pre-recess wrangling in the House and Senate this weekend was a letter Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sent to Congress "clarifying" his July 24 testimony.

In his testimony on that date, Gonzales told Senators that he was not aware of any instances in which senior Justice Department officials had participated in White House political briefings of the sort that have already been deemed illegal.

It appears, unsurprisingly, that Mr. Gonzales was mistaken.

It certainly is!  That's why it's so great that we live in a free and open democracy, where that sort of thing never happens.  Right?  Right?

Wrong.  Sadly, the authors of that above statement are relating it to the United States.  Today the New York Times editorial board makes the case that under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Bush's Justice Department has thrown the principle of nonpartisanship out the window, then jumped up and down on it and spat on it, all without regard to the rights and liberty of their political opponents.

Here's an excellent timeline of events documenting the actions of the White House and Department of Justice surrounding the US Attorney firings.  It's a nice refresher to get yourself up to speed before round two starts, now that Senator Leahy has issued his subpoenas.

Say bye-bye to another one:

Yeah, this is the guy who called several of the fired US attorneys to pressure them into staying quiet about the circumstances surrounding their departures.  I'm surprised he's lasted this long.

More depressing information on the connection between the fired US Attorneys' work on Native American issues and their dismissals:

The three attorneys (Paul Charlton - AZ, Margaret Chiara - MI, and Dan Bogden - NV) stopped short of saying they were fired because of their work on native issues, but former USA for Minnesota Tom Heffelfinger was slated for firing repotedly because of "spending an excessive amount of time" on such work.  He quit earlier last year without knowing he was on the dismissal list.

The broader issue of commitment to solving the crime problem on reservations is even more worrisome.

I wrote last week about a Justice Department official testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Committee's ongoing investigation of the politicization of the Justice Department.

At the hearing, DOJ official Bradley Schlozman testified at least ten times that, when he was a U.S. Attorney in Missouri, he was "directed" by the Justice Department's Office of Public Integrity to charge four members of a liberal voter-registration group with election fraud mere days before the 2006 elections, despite the fact that Department guidelines mandate such charges be brought after the election (the suit was later dismissed by a judge due to a lack of evidence).

Almost certain that such testimony was false, and that Schlozman himself chose to file the charges for political purposes, I opined later that day that the testimony "...should result in perjury charges against the man."

Mr. Shlozman probably reached the same conslusion, and today issued a "clarification" of his testimony (i.e., complete and utter reversal of his testimony). In this "clarification," Schlozman says:

Essentially, Schlozman now admits that the entire basis for his line of defense during his testimony was fabricated. I ask now, why has Mr. Schlozman has not been charged with  perjury?

Maybe they will wait until a few days before the presidential election.

If this is true, it's going to make me very sad:

It would be a new low if Gonzales' "Justice" Department turned doing substantive, helpful work on issues of importance to the most impoverished communities in our nation into something to be discouraged under the threat of being fired.