The next time Michael Mukasey is called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee I suggest that he be strapped to a stretcher, a rag placed in his mouth and water poured in the rag until he begins to answer completely and truthfully the questions put to him by the committee.

Now that waterboarding has become an accepted form of interrogation in these United States, I recommend that it be utilized not only with Mukasey, but with all future witnesses before committees of the congress. I think that there are subpoenas kicking around out there for Condi Rice and other executive department figures who have been less than forthcoming in past appearances, so perhaps as our favorite republican tough guy Rudy Giuliani says, we should question them aggressively.

It might be a good idea if the voting public were able to use the same technique in questioning the presidential candidates on their positions. For the rest of the debates all candidates should be wheeled in strapped to stretchers and aggressively questioned using this simulated drowning method.

Using these methods we may begin to get the truth from our "public servants" and declared wannabes.

This will not work in Atlanta however, they don't have enough water at the moment to achieve any kind of satisfactory results.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

"We need a respected competent intelligence professional who can respect and manage this growing agency. Based on what I know so far, General Mike Hayden appears to fit that bill."

-- Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein on the Nomination of Michael Hayden as CIA Chief

Think again senator.

1. Hayden oversaw the illegal Domestic Spying Program

2. Hayden obeyed illegal orders:

It's a military officer's sworn duty to refuse to obey illegal orders. As an auther wrote in the Navy Times (warning: doc file):

According to military legal studies, a lawful order must be reasonably linked to military needs, be specific and not be contrary to established law -- the Constitution, United States or other laws -- or be beyond the authority of the person issuing the command.

In other words, Hayden had a legal, Constitutional, and moral obligation not to conduct the illegal spying that's characterized his recent career. He's a disgrace to his uniform, and unworthy of any position of public responsibility. Someone who betrays the Constitution as Hayden has done deserves the label "un-American."

3. And Hayden displayed gross ignorance of the Constituion that he has sworn to protect. Surely, the next CIA Chief should know that "probable cause" is the legal standard that protects Americans from "unreasonable searches and seizures."

Update [2006-1-28 16:19:59 by sdf]: georgia10 has the lastest state of the field over at The Big Orange:

This is a follow-up to Armando's great posts this morning on the filibuster. Improbable? Yeah. Impossible? Never. Take 15 minutes out of your weekend for democracy's sake. Track the updates on the cloture count here. Here is the latest update: NO on cloture (announced support for a filibuster):

Barbara Boxer (D- CA)
Dianne Feinstein (D- CA)
Christopher J. Dodd (D- CT)
Richard J. Durbin (D- IL)
John F. Kerry (D- MA)
Edward M. Kennedy (D- MA)
Paul S. Sarbanes (D- MD)
Debbie A. Stabenow (D- MI)
Harry Reid (D- NV)
Hillary Rodham Clinton (D- NY)
Charles Schumer (D- NY)
Ron Wyden (D- OR)
Russell D. Feingold (D- WI)
Barack Obama (D-IL)
Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

Senators To Call:

Blanche Lambert Lincoln (D- AR), 202-224-4843
Joseph I. Lieberman (D- CT), 202-224-4041
Thomas R. Carper (D- DE), 202-224-2441
Daniel K. Inouye (D- HI), 202-224-3934
Tom Harkin (D- IA), 202-224-3254
Evan Bayh (D- IN), 202-224-5623
Barbara A. Mikulski (D- MD), 202-224-4654
Carl Levin (D- MI), 202-224-6221
Mark Dayton (D- MN), 202-224-3244
Max Baucus (D- MT), 202-224-2651
Frank Lautenberg (D- NJ), 202-224-3224
Jeff Bingaman (D- NM), 202-224-5521
Jack Reed (D- RI), 202-224-4642
Patrick J. Leahy (D- VT), 202-224-4242
Maria Cantwell (D- WA), 202-224-3441
Patty Murray (D- WA), 202-224-2621
Herb Kohl (D- WI), 202-224-5653
John D. Rockefeller, IV (D- WV), 202-224-6472
James M. Jeffords (I- VT), 202-224-5141
Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D- DE) , 202-224-5042
Bill Nelson (D- FL), 202-224-5274
Daniel K. Akaka (D- HI), 202-224-6361
Mary Landrieu (D- LA), 202-224-5824
Byron L. Dorgan (D- ND), 202-224-2551
Olympia Snowe (R- ME), 202-224-5344

The bold are those in most need of some convincing. Senators Biden, Nelson, Akaka, Landrieu, Dorgan, and Snowe have stated they would likely not support a filibuster. Not a firm stance, like Chaffee, Salazar, Pryor, and Conrad, so there is reason to keep calling them.

Georgia has more details over there, so go take a look.
Original post below the fold:

John A. is certainly right (though I don't agree that all Dems are equally to blame), as is profmarcus, that after much anticipation of a battle over Alito, the remarks emerging from the Democrats  (or I would emphasize some Democrats) represent a profound failure of leadership.  I have, perhaps through a spasm of wishful thinking, been willing to attribute the reports of "glum Democrats" to a SCLM eager to parrot the latest administration line, but it's impossible to ignore the remarks of prominent Dems this weekend.

We Californians have long since learned not to be disappointed with (or at least not surprised by) Dianne Feinstein's shortcomings, her self-important forays into a "reasonableness" that would be best left for fellow self-important blowhards such as Biden and Lieberman.  Still (as Georgia10 noted over at Kos), Feinstein's comments Sunday morning are both pathetic and sadly telling: