Cheney appoints retired Judge Mukasey as Attorney General

VP Dick "Deadeye" Cheney, the guy who shoots lawyers (and they apologise) apointed Judge Michael B. Mukasey a retired federal judge from New York as the third Attorney General to serve under his friend Dubya. The President met Mukasey on Sept. 1 for the first time and spent an hour with him.

"Mukasey is a fine public servant who knows from experience the challenge that terrorism presents to our country," Dick said when nominating him yesterday.

Mukasey, is now 66 and in private practice in Manhattan (Patterson BelknapWebb & Tyler LLP). Since 9/11 he has repeatedly vigorously supported the administration's assuming broad powers in pursuing terrorist threats, that undermine the US Constitution. He was especially active in supporting the conducting electronic surveillance of terrorist suspects and in imprisoning them before trial.

Which is why Dick chose him. He claimed yesterday that Mick Mukasey would "ensure that the rights and freedoms of the American people are protected, and that includes the freedom from fear of terrorist attacks."

Mick was enthusiastic about the USA Patriot Act, that grants wide new law-enforcement power to the executive branch, in the teeth of oposition by civil liberties groups. "I think one would have to concede that the USA Patriot Act has an awkward, even Orwellian, name, which is one of those Washington acronyms derived by calling the law "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Interrupt and Obstruct Terrorism. That awkward name may very well be the worst thing about the statute," he said in a WSJ OP ed in 2004.

Mick also presided over major cases involving the dispute between Larry Silverstein and his insurers concerning insurance proceeds related to the World Trade Center site when somebody ran planes into it just after he had purchased it.( A Federal jury (Dec '04) ruled the 9/11 attack on the WTC was two events for insurance purposes. So Larry was open to collect up to $2.2 billion from nine insurers.)

Previously he had he consigned Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman to the slammer for life for his role in the 1993 half - assed bombing of the World Trade Center.

This enthusiasm may not be unrelated to his actions in putting several young Muslim men as so-called material witnesses in terrorism cases in the slammer which was loudly criticized by immigration lawyers. ...but praised by the Justice Department. He also signed in 2002 the material witness warrant that let the FBI arrest U.S. citizen Jose Padilla and keep him in prison for 4 years without charge.

Mick has other high profile admirers amongst whom he can count on Sen. Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat who led the campaign to oust runty, sweating, lying Alberto Gonzales from the Justice Department.

Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani (Mick's sone is an Attorney in his law firm), and Manhattan's Democratic district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau will also admire Dick's choice. William Kristol, (signatory and co-founder of the PNAC) the editor of The Weekly Standard, published an article on Saturday "Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General ... And conservatives should be happy." and pointed to an OP-ed pice in the WSJ he penned last month about "the inadequacy of the current approach to terrorism prosecutions."

Kristol wrote that 'the most contentious fights over the next year are likely to be on war-on-terror issues," and he said that Mukasey "is first-rate on these."

“I think that he’ll not only provide the president with first-rate legal counsel, but this nomination will go through Congress without much, if any, partisan politicking, and I think the country needs a break from another explosive, controversial nomination,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who knew Mukasey at Yale Law School in the mid-1960s.

Sen. Arlen "One Bullet" Specter, senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary panel, has spoken for a quick resolution ..“There is no doubt that the Department of Justice has been in disarray for some time, So that I think it is very important to act promptly, but not with undue haste, getting an opportunity to review Judge Mukasey’s background.”

The White House expect no problems with his speedy confirmation.

Meanwhile Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler who has been nominated as a federal Judge will will serve as acting attorney general during Mukasey’s confirmation process... and hopefully sirt out the fucking mess left behind by the President's Lying Lawyer.