Democracy's easiest question

More from Senator Dodd's must read prepared remarks from the floor of the Senate, delivered 24 June, 2008:

When he came to the Senate before his confirmation, Michael Mukasey was asked a simple question, bluntly and plainly: “Is waterboarding constitutional?”

He replied: “If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”

One would hope for a little more insight from someone so famously well-versed in national security law. But Mr. Mukasey pressed on with the obstinacy of a witness pleading the fifth: “If it’s torture….If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.”

And that is the best this noted jurist, this legal scholar, this longtime judge, a supposed expert on national security law had to offer on the defining moral issue of this presidency. Claims of ignorance. Word games.

Now-Attorney General Mukasey was asked the easiest question we have in a democracy: Can the president openly break the law? Can he—as we know he’s done already—order warrantless wiretapping, ignore the will of Congress, and then hide behind nebulous powers he claims to find in the Constitution?

His response: The president has “the authority to defend the country.”

And in one swoop, the Attorney General conceded to the president nearly unlimited power, just as long as he finds a lawyer willing to stuff his actions into the boundless rubric of “defending the country.” Unlimited power to defend the country, to protect us as one man sees fit, even if that means listening to our phone calls without a warrant, even if that means holding some of us indefinitely.

That is, Mr. President, contempt for the rule of law.

And so, this is very much about torture – about “enhanced interrogation methods” and waterboarding.