Michael Mukasey

The possibility prompts fervent opposition from Republicans, who say the 9/11 terrorists should never be allowed anywhere on U.S. soil, let alone in a civilian U.S. court.

Former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen today commends the Bush administration’s “well-run, highly disciplined CIA interrogation program, where clear guidelines were established and abuses or deviations from approved techniques were stopped, reported and addressed.”
I guess Thiessen didn’t read the same CIA inspector general report that so many of us have been scrutinizing in the [...]

The Washington Post’s editorial today arguing for prosecution only of “those who went well beyond the often-extreme measures authorized by the [Office of Legal Counsel] memos” that justified abusive interrogations is calling more attention to the rumor, first reported by Daniel Klaidman in Newsweek, that Attorney General Eric Holder is seriously considering such prosecutions.
According to [...]

It’s been one year since then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey proposed that Congress pass legislation declaring a new, expanded war with al-Qaeda and the Taliban — thereby granting the president the authority to detain indefinitely members of those groups anywhere in the world.

Attorney General Eric Holder today withdrew the controversial ruling by his predecessor that immigrants in deportation proceedings have no right to appeal an adverse decision based on their lawyer’s mistakes.
The immediate effect is to restore the right to re-open a case based on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, but Holder also said he [...]

Attorney General Eric Holder said today that he will soon be issuing his opinion regarding whether immigrants in immigration proceedings can challenge adverse decisions that were due to mistakes made by their lawyers.
As I’ve written before, Attorney General Michael Mukasey in one of his last days in office issued an unprecedented opinion ruling that immigration [...]

Greg Sargent makes a great point about the torture memos:
What was actually revealed in yesterday’s memos was the nature of the Bush administration’s efforts to legalize and justify the “harsh interrogation techniques” that we mostly knew about already. And it’s not terribly difficult to imagine why some folks would want those legal efforts kept under [...]

Since former (man, it feels good to type that) Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) was convicted on seven felony corruption charges, there have been some serious twists in the case against the 85-year-old man known as “Uncle Ted” to Alaskans.
Just a few weeks ago, a whistleblower came forward reporting that the Justice Department had “intentionally schemed” [...]

Steve Aftergood at Secrecy News reports on a weird episode: Attorney General Michael Mukasey reacted pretty strongly to a bill sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) that would compel congressional notification of opinions by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that conclude the executive branch isn’t bound by certain laws. Obviously, the rationale for [...]

I’m glad to see that somebody isn’t just taking at face value Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s recent statements that Bush administration officials who approved the use of torture shouldn’t be prosecuted and needn’t be pardoned  because they all reasonably believed their actions were lawful.
On Thursday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Constitution, [...]