Mukasey's Plea

By Patrick

Greenwald discusses Mukasey's San Francisco speech:

His argument means that government officials must be free to break the law in a classified intelligence setting with impunity, because we can't risk subjecting them to a court of law since, presumably, we can't trust our country's federal judges with classified information and so it's preferable to allow lawbreaking by our highest government officials. That's a pretty extraordinary -- and pretty reprehensible -- argument for a former federal judge and current Attorney General to be making.

Scott Horton's take on the same speech:

Mukasey’s posture does not stop with willful ignorance of instances of abuse, it includes mischievous stonewalling to block proper Congressional investigation. When the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on political prosecutions, the Justice Department sent no one to speak, offered written submissions riddled with false statements, and refused to produce the documents that had been requested, often on absurd pretexts. In sum, the Justice Department has behaved and continues to behave not like a law enforcement agency, but like a white-collar criminal who has been caught in some very dirty dealings and is eager to obstruct the course of justice.