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Harry Reid's statement:
"I'm glad President Bush listened to Congress and put aside his plan to replace Alberto Gonzales with another partisan Administration insider. Judge Mukasey has strong professional credentials and a reputation for independence. A man who spent 18 years on the federal bench surely understands the importance of checks and balances and knows how to say no to the President when he oversteps the Constitution.
"But there should be no rush to judgment. The Senate Judiciary Committee must carefully examine Judge Mukasey's views on the complex legal challenges facing the nation. I look forward to meeting Judge Mukasey, and I will work with Chairman Leahy to ensure a full airing of the issues presented by his nomination."
No matter what might be said, it kind of seems like there is a rush to judgment. Schumer apparently suggested the guy:
Through weeks of quiet deliberation, Bush abandoned the confrontational pronouncements to which Congress has grown accustomed. Instead, White House counsel Fred Fielding reached out to Democrats, including Bush's constant opponent Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who had previously recommended Mukasey as a Supreme Court nominee. Schumer and Fielding went so far as to discuss names, and Mukasey's came up. "We're in an alternate universe," says one Senate aide, "Charles Schumer saying something nice about a guy used to be the kiss of death."
I am feeling a strong sense of Harriet Miers déjà vu with this nomination, though without the obvious cronyism and thus the obvious path to denying his nomination. Back then, Reid also came out with pre-emptive praise of Miers, who he obviously wanted to see confirmed (and, after Alito, I think we all wish she had been). However, Miers was defeated with a combination of left-wing mockery (see Harriet Miers's blog!!!) and right-wing ideological opposition. Even before that, both sides struck a huge blow against her confirmation early on, and made their later arguments more salient, because they were both saying the same thing on the day of her nomination: cronyism. The negative conventional wisdom on Miers was defined in the first twenty-four hours after her nomination, which is largely the case for all nominees, because both Democrats and Republicans were saying the same thing about her. This time around, I'm not seeing any unified negative message coming from both the left and the right. I think Glenn Greenwald sums this up nicely:
There is no question that Judge Mukasey, a Reagan appointee who served as the Chief Judge for the Southern District of New York before retiring recently, is close to the far right on the judicial spectrum. He undoubtedly holds many legal and political views which most Democrats would find objectionable, perhaps even intolerable. But that will be true of any nominee Bush selects, and it is true of the current Acting Attorney General, Paul Clement, who will remain in place if no nominee is confirmed.(…)
ut any such happiness proved to be unwarranted. Judge Mukasey repeatedly defied the demands of the Bush administration, ruled against them, excoriated them on multiple occasions for failing to comply with his legally issued orders, and ruled that Padilla was entitled to contest the factual claims of the government and to have access to lawyers. He issued these rulings in 2002 and 2003, when virtually nobody was defying the Bush administration on anything, let alone on assertions of executive power to combat the Terrorists. And he made these rulings in the face of what was became the standard Bush claim that unless there was complete acquiescence to all claimed powers by the President, a Terrorist attack would occur and the blood would be on the hands of those who impeded the President.
So, basically, Mukasey is a right-winger, but everyone they nominate will be a right-winger, and at least Mukcasey stuck it to the Bush administration by upholding legal standard in the Padilla case. This will result in mixed messaging coming from both the left and the right, and as such no negative conventional wisdom will be formed around Mukcasey.
Unless there is some sort of smoking gun or major skeleton found in Mukcasey's closet, it looks like his nomination will be a done deal. These battles are frequently won and lost in the first twenty-four hours, and right now it looks like he is winning handily.
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