In key Gitmo case, Mukasey stays on White House path

Can caretaker Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey set the Justice Department straight?

That is the question that hangs over the short-termer, who inherited a department set back on its heels by complaints of political interference and a readiness to overlook legal standards in the fight against terrorism.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying the attorney general was "content to serve as a caretaker for the regime of excessive executive power established by the Bush administration."

This morning, Mukasey made it clear that on one of the most controversial issues facing the department, the Bush administration was not shifting course: The Supreme Court's decision that gave detainees at Guantanamo Bay the right to use federal courts to challenge their imprisonment.

In a speech at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, he turned to Congress to limit the impact of the ruling. He said it should pass legislation barring federal judges from letting out of the prison there any of the detainees, many of whom he said "pose an extraordinary threat to Americans."

He wasn't saying the court decision should be ignored. His point was to find a way of keeping the prisoners at Guantanamo while their court cases proceed.

"Congress should make clear that a federal court may not order the government to bring enemy combatants into the United States" to attend court proceedings, he said.

It is with just such issues that Mukasey's reputation as attorney general is likely to rest.

The Washington Post noted that he has "rejected requests to name a special prosecutor to examine whether Cabinet officials committed war crimes when they approved harsh interrogation tactics for terrorism suspects."

And, it observed, he decided not to revisit the question of whether a public corruption case criticized by 52 bipartisan state attorneys general was a matter of "selective prosecution" -- meaning that politics played a role in the decision to prosecute.

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Comments

[T Jefferson]

In the end, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy and the rest of his gutless Democrat colleagues will support whatever George W. Bush puts forward. The man (Bush) has an approval rating in the '20s, and should be the "lamest" of lame ducks, but the Democrats cave into his every desire for fear that the Republicans will somehow score points by labeling them as weak on national security. What they don't seem to realize is that millions of voters, such as myself, now see Democrats as unprincipled and weak on everything. I would much prefer that they stand up for our constitutional rights and the principles upon which this country was founded; because once those principles are gone, there's really no reason in my mind to protect this country.