Mukasey for AG -- NOT

Mukasey's weaseling on water-boarding was unworthy of him. Perhaps feeling pressure from his White House sponsors, he cast himself last week as little more than Torture Boy in long pants. His refusal to call water-boarding torture delighted the White House. His suggestion that he really wasn't familiar with the particulars of the technique was laughable. By now, no literate American adult is unfamiliar with this charming form of interrogation by near-drowning, which makes the claim even more absurd coming from a retired New York federal judge whose main claim to fame is presiding over difficult terrorism trials. Mukasey's response that "if water-boarding is torture, torture is not constitutional" was a transparent evasion. And the entire exchange throws a more sinister light on his borrowed quip that the infamous Gonzales-sponsored torture memo "was worse than a sin, it was a mistake. It was unnecessary." One now fears that Mukasey doesn't so much disagree with the substance of that memo, as he thinks that writing it down was a political error.

ouch. Read more from Prof. Bowman at Slate.