- The Bush administration has pulled off another Roberts-type
Supreme Court nomination: evading or ending the political firestorm that
surrounded the former Attorney General and serial liar Alberto Gonzales
- by naming a closet insider, with the appearance of a sterling track record,
for the position of Attorney General. Michael Mukasey's background appears
to have deep conservative roots, but upon close inspection, we find ominous
signs that he is deeply allied with the false right-wing that is steering
our nation towards the globalist agenda.
-
- Even arch Bush administration critic Scott Horton of
Harpers Magazine can't find much wrong with Mukasey. "The president
has nominated former federal judge Michael Mukasey to serve as the next
attorney general. The Senate will have plenty of questions to ask and issues
to raise, and it should take this confirmation seriously. I have known
Michael Mukasey for over twenty years and I have a pretty good sense of
his views on a great many issues. There are not many issues on which we
agree, frankly. I am a civil libertarian and human rights advocate. First,
Mukasey is driven by a concern for national security, and his many years
on the bench tell him that our criminal justice system is inadequate to
the task of trying terrorists... Many of the civil liberties that Mukasey
sees as vulnerabilities, I see as strengths.
-
- "Second, Mukasey is not just a prominent judge,
he is a judicious personality. That is to say, he has one much underrated
quality in abundance: the ability to listen carefully, weigh facts and
arguments and then form decisions. He does not rush to judgment. Having
an attorney general who can listen carefully and deliberate will be a refreshing
change. Third, Mukasey is a lawyer's lawyer. He actually cares a great
deal about the law and what it provides; he approaches a question very
carefully and with appropriate respect and deference for statutes and precedent."
-
- I don't share Horton's disarming view. The virtues he
mentions can be very dangerous if they are being used merely to mask the
candidate's secret allegiance to a hidden conspiracy, which I believe exists.
Hidden beneath the competent exterior are associations that tell more than
superficial credentials. The AP reveals that "Mukasey may have made
enemies, but he also made powerful friends. He and his son, Marc Mukasey,
are justice advisers to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. Marc Mukasey
also works at Giuliani's law firm. Michael Mukasey was the judge who swore
in Mayor-elect Giuliani in 1994 and 1998." Giuliani is the establishment's
heir apparent to George Bush, and is, in my opinion, a knowing conspirator
in the cover-ups surrounding government involvement in 9/11.
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- Real conservatives, defenders of the Founding Father's
view of the Constitution, are wary of Mukasey, which even Time Magazine
can see. "Bush has opened himself up to attack from the right. Conservatives
are worried about Mukasey's 1994 denial of asylum for a Chinese man who
said his wife had been forced to have an abortion under that country's
one-child law, which they say indicates he's weak on pro-life issues. And
though he has consistently ruled with the administration on a number of
important and high-profile terrorism cases, Mukasey broke with them in
an early, crucial ruling, saying that American citizen Jose Padilla had
a right to a lawyer, no matter what his status in the war on terror. Mukasey
is also very close to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom social
conservatives distrust."
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- Time is misreading Mukasey's ruling on Padilla. Mukasey
took this correct position only to bring attention to what he considers
the "bad side" of our criminal justice system: awarding rights
to "terrorists," which is a bad piece of criticism. The rights
go to suspects who have not been convicted--not to terrorists. There's
a big difference and he knows it. In fact, Padilla was the prime example
of a non-terrorist citizen whose disaffection with America was taken advantage
of by government agent provocateurs anxious to induce converts to Islam
Muslims to take training in Afghanistan. These misguided souls, induced
to engage in anti-American activities and camps, were then rounded up as
terrorists so as to justify an eventual crackdown in the phony War on Terror.
-
- The NY Times also revealed more interesting background,
and some erroneous conclusions, on Mukasey. "Nor is Mr. Mukasey (pronounced
mew-KAY-see) a Washington insider with experience in managing a federal
bureaucracy [that hardly excludes Mukasey from being a Washington Insider.
The Bush-Cheney team picks no one for high position unless they are an
insider, or at least completely controllable]. He is a New Yorker through
and through [So was FDR, but that didn't mean he wasn't a globalist puppet].
In private practice before joining the bench, he represented some of his
hometown's most showy personalities, including the lawyer Roy M. Cohn and
the socialite Claus von Bulow, and its powerful institutions, including
both The Daily News and The Wall Street Journal [None of this is evidence
of his NOT being an insider]. His admirers and friends in New York include
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former Republican mayor, and Robert M. Morgenthau,
Manhattan's Democratic district attorney. While much of that background
suggests he might not have been Mr. Bush's first choice, a review of his
record shows that he would defend the administration on the issue that
matters most to the president, national security."
-
- In today's world, that equates to using National Security
to undermine the constitutional protections on liberty and national sovereignty.
"Mr. Mukasey, 66, now in private practice in Manhattan, has repeatedly
spoken out to support the administration's claim to broad powers in pursuing
terrorist threats, especially in conducting electronic surveillance of
terrorism suspects and in imprisoning them before trial [very telling!].
As a judge after the Sept. 11 attacks, he ordered the detention of young
Muslim men as so-called material witnesses in terrorism cases, decisions
that were criticized by immigration lawyers and praised by the Justice
Department. Mr. Mukasey has endorsed provisions of the USA Patriot Act,
the law passed by Congress after 9/11 to grant wide new law-enforcement
power to the executive branch. The measure has been universally condemned
by civil liberties groups. 'That awkward name may very well be the worst
thing about the statute,' he said in a speech in 2004 [Not at all! The
worst thing about it was its undermining of civil liberties]."
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- I'll end this section with a cogent analysis by Chris
Floyd, a co-journalist with Scott Horton at Harpers. Floyd differs significantly
with Horton's positive appraisal of Mukasay: "Mukasey may well be
a decent man who will restore sanity and the rule of law to the corrupt
Justice Department of Bush factotum Alberto Gonzales, as many think. One
can only hope so. But given the history of the Bush Administration, and
its demonstrated, unbroken track record of using every appointment, policy
and element of government to augment its authoritarian power and to push
its radical agenda of corporate rapine and military aggression, one would
also be either foolish or incorrigibly optimistic to assume that the nomination
of the judge will result in some great change, especially as the Justice
Department will still be riddled with partisan goons eager to pervert the
law on behalf of the Leader and his party.
-
- "But whether the Mukasey nomination changes things
or not, its real import seems clear: Bush has chosen a 'consensus' candidate
in order to clear away the imbroglio over the AG and the Justice Department
before launching the certain military action against Iran. He doesn't need
any new controversy to distract from the PR campaign he is now 'rolling
out' for the fall warmongering season. Nor do the Democrats want another
controversy. As we have mentioned here so often before, they are completely
on board with the idea of military action against Iran. The Washington
Establishment is set on a new war.
-
- "Aside from the literally murderous imperial [actually,
globalist] ambitions that are driving such a course, a new war with Iran
will provide a distraction from the bipartisan failures in Iraq: the failure
by Bush to fully secure the conquest (although he and the militarists and
the war profiteers continue to thrive on the bloodshed); and the failure
by the Democrats to do anything to stop the war. All of this will be pushed
into the background when the Bush Regime launches its hundreds of sorties
across the length and breadth of Iran, killing thousands, destroying vital
infrastructure and plunging the world into more war-profitable upheaval
[those on the Left like Floyd and Horton all too often see only the "evil
capitalist" motive behind it all. They fail to understand the conflict
creation motive which is driving a globalist-not capitalist-agenda]. The
nomination of a "consensus" candidate for attorney general will
not change any of this.
-
- "And however decent and honorable Mukasey might
have been throughout his long career, we cannot overlook this one, plain,
overriding truth: Anyone who publicly associates themselves with the Bush
Administration today isentering into a knowing collaboration with evil
-- with aggressive war, with mass murder, with unconstitutional tyranny,
with rendition, Gitmo, torture, state terrorism, the whole horrible ball
of wax. Whatever Judge Mukasey has accomplished up to this point has been
irrevocably tainted, with blood, by his decision to serve such a regime."
Absolutely true. And, Mukasey cannot be totally ignorant of these connections.
He's a closet insider.
-
- Sensing that the Mukasey nomination may take a while,
the Bush White House has suddenly made a switch in who will head the DOJ
in the interim period. Scott Horton revealed that Solicitor General Paul
Clement will be replaced by Peter Keisler, the head of the Civil Division...it
appears that Bush's bait-and-switch move--first tapping Clement and then
substituting Keisler----had to do with his ultimate decision to give the
nod to Mukasey.
-
- "First, the 'movement conservatives' [he is describing
Neo-cons, not true conservatives] would be very unhappy about his decision
to give up on Ted Olson in favor of Mukasey. Keisler is considered a core
'movement conservative.' He is one of the founders and a central pillar
of the Federalist Society, the center of the 'movement.' Appointing him
as Acting Attorney General would be a sop to the Federalist Society crew."
-
- But that's not all. "White House fully anticipated
that the Senate Judiciary Committee would hold the Mukasey nomination hostage
to its demands for documents relating to the probe of Karl Rove and his
involvement in manipulating hiring and firing and prosecutorial decisions
within the Department of Justice. There is also a strong concern that the
Senate will press for appointment of a special prosecutor to look at the
question of politically motivated hirings, firings and prosecutions. But
the documents are the special concern. As one source put it to me, 'I can't
stress enough how mortified the White House is about the prospect of disclosure
of these documents. I have no idea what's in them, but the way some people
close to the president and Rove behave, you've got to think it's something
extremely worrisome. There is no way they are ever going to give way on
this. They are intent on protecting Karl to the end.' Since the White House
isn't going to play Patrick Leahy's game on the documents, it wanted to
provide some reverse pressure. I am told that Keisler is that reverse pressure.
As several sources told me, Keisler means 'straight line continuity with
Alberto Gonzales, his policies and approaches.' Does that mean continued
politicization of the Justice Department? Yes."
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- World Affairs Brief
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- Commentary and Insights On A Troubled World
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- Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution
permitted.
-
- Cite source as Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief
- http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com
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