Saintless

The Bush administration told a federal judge it was not obligated to preserve videotapes of CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists and urged the court not to look into the tapes’ destruction.

In court documents filed Friday night, government lawyers told U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy that demanding information about the tapes would interfere with current investigations by Congress and the Justice Department.

The former Governor of Texas telling a federal judge to back off, and what is going to get done about it?

Later in the MSNBC article…

The administration has taken a similar strategy in its dealings with Congress on the issue. On Friday, the Justice Department urged Congress to hold off on questioning witnesses and demanding documents because that evidence is part of a joint CIA-Justice Department investigation.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey also refused to give Congress details of the government’s investigation into the matter Friday, saying doing so could raise questions about whether the inquiry was vulnerable to political pressure.

Excuse me, is his refusal not proving that HE is vulnerable to political pressure (like we didn’t already know that)?

It blows my mind that this is going on, and no one seems to be paying attention, or care. Impeach his ass.

I had been under the impression that most of the Senate Democrats had been castrated upon being sworn in. And indeed, they may only be bluffing, but they’re at least pretending that they have balls today. From the NY Times:

Two Senate Democrats warned Monday that the Judiciary Committee would delay confirmation of President Bush’s choice for attorney general unless the White House turned over documents that the panel was seeking for several investigations.

[...]

But two Democrats who will have a powerful say over whether Mr. Mukasey gets confirmed — Senators Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Charles E. Schumer of New York — vowed on Monday to use the nomination to extract information from a reluctant White House.

“All I want is the material we need to ask some questions about the former attorney general’s conduct, on torture and warrantless wiretapping, so we can legitimately ask, ‘Here’s what was done in the past, what will you do?”’ Mr. Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman, said.

[...]

The White House wants Mr. Mukasey confirmed by Oct. 8, when the Senate leaves for its next recess. But Mr. Leahy said there would be no quick confirmation without the documents. He said he had told the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, that “cooperation with the White House would be central” to scheduling hearings.

My only worry is that Bush has used recess appointments in the past to make his choices permanent without Senate confirmation. I may have missed it, but I don’t recall this (excess) power being taken away from Bush.

Last night, I had the rare opportunity to sit down and watch television, instead of cleaning, playing referee between children, working or whatever other emergency comes up, so I chose Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann.

Keith showed a clip where Tony Snow said (regarding Congressional investigations into the White House):

But make no mistake, based on legal precedent this is something that the drafters of this particular referral know has very little chance of going anywhere. And so the question is, why are they doing this rather than the people’s business?

Excuse me? Is he seriously trying to say that the White House breaking the law is not the people’s business? I half expected him to wave his hand, saying “these are not the droids you’re looking for.”

I recently posted about Orange Day and the grassroots efforts to begin impeachment proceedings against Cheney. I’m still 100% behind the idea of impeachment, for both Darth Cheney and King George. However, the Cindy Sheehan movement, backed by Democrats.com (not to be confused with Democrats.org), has really disappointed me. I like that they went to John Conyers’ office, but I disliked the things that they have said since that time. John Conyers is not one of the bad guys, and he obviously wants impeachment as badly as I do. I respect him for showing patience, and making sure that impeachment isn’t doomed to failure if he begins the proceedings.