Mukasey

In the wake of his torture-waffling, I sympathize with all the anti-Mukasey sentiment cropping up in the liberal blogosphere, but I also think it's a little misplaced:

But if Mukasey won't say that waterboarding is torture and claims that the President has some undefined power to violate statute law — even criminal laws, such as the ban on torture and other war crimes — under his "Article II powers," then why should the Senate Judiciary Committee even bring his nomination to a vote? If he says he hasn't read the latest torture memos or decided whether waterboarding is torture, Sen. Leahy ought to tell him to read the memos and observe a waterboarding session and come back when he's done his homework.

That's all fine, but it's also not going to end the Justice Department's support for torture. Not confirming Mukasey might be a symbolic way for Democrats to say they don't condone torture, but it wouldn't be much more than that--they might as well just pass a sense of the Senate resolution declaring that they abhor cruel and unusual punishment and call it a day. After all, the acting AG isn't going to stop torture. George Bush isn't going to change his mind on this. Dick Cheney still dreams of sugar plum water boards.

The only way to change the policy is to actively and specifically address it. There aren't that many options, and none of them seem likely (at least to me) to pan out. But the wind-up and pitch would be to subpoena people and documents for the purposes of holding vivid oversight hearings, then to selectively defund the facilities and programs that foster torture, then, when that fails, to attempt to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney. I don't think there's much appetite for any of that, nor do I think much of it is feasible. But in the meantime, refusing to confirm Mukasey accomplishes only as much as does scolding him loudly and then confirming him anyhow.