BREAKING: Schumer and Feinstein Will Vote For MukaseyBenchmarking Schumer on John Bolton, David Addington and Mukasey:
On paper, Mukasey was a good choice. But in his performance, he decided to lick and polish the boots of Bush administration torture-meister, Cheney chief-of-staff
David Addington. When that happened, Mukasey went to the dark side and abandoned the excellent efforts put forward by other Bush administration anti-torture advocates like Legal Adviser to the Secretary of State John Bellinger, former State Departement Policy Planning Deputy Director Matthew Waxman, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, and former Counselor to Secretary of State Rice Philip Zelikow.
<...>
During the "third" major effort by the administration to get John Bolton confirmed as US Ambassador to the United Nations, one of the shocking parts of that battle was not only trying to get Republicans like former Senator Lincoln Chafee to stand strong against Bolton -- but to undo the damage that Schumer was doing inside the Democratic Caucus.
Two Democratic Senators involved in that part of the Bolton battle -- one on the Foreign Relations Committee and one not -- told me personally that Senator Schumer called them to say "
a vote against Bolton is a vote against Israel."
<...>
Schumer has a chance to prove people like me wrong -- that he's not soft on pugnacious nationalism of the Jesse Helms and John Bolton sort -- and he's not soft on torture a la David Addington style.
Past experience says he'll support Mukasey and consider this his "profiles in courage moment" where he weighed the country's interests, his party's interests, and screwed both because of his own idiosyncratic involvement with this nominee.
No, a vote for
Bolton would have been a vote for a
warmonger!
edited typo