Thumbs-down on the Mukasey vote

Re “Mukasey all but a shoo-in for approval,” Nov. 3

If senior senators have deep concerns about Michael B. Mukasey’s nuanced stance on torture and his expansive view of executive privilege, why do they feel compelled to confirm him? The tacit understanding appears to be that if they don’t, President Bush will nominate someone even worse.

Bush is a lame-duck president with an approval rating in the 20s, and yet he continues to succeed in intimidating Congress. Senate leaders would rather give up than explain to the public that after Abu Ghraib and six years of White House scandals, we need an attorney general who condemns torture, respects the Geneva Convention and understands the limits of presidential power.

Maeve Wolfenden

Sherman Oaks

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Re “Judge Mukasey has my vote,” Opinion, Nov. 3

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s approval of Makasey can only cause dismay to all who hoped that the United States would find a voice among Democrats for an attorney general who would take seriously the rule of law. When asked about “certain coercive interrogation techniques,” Makasey slips quickly into generalities and legal quibbles. Sen. Feinstein, torture is torture. When will we stop handing propaganda victories to the likes of Al Qaeda and awaken to the fact that our international standing for justice and fair play have by this time suffered almost irreparable harm?

Peter A. O’Reilly

Claremont

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Feinstein is wrong: Mukasey is former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales.

Like Gonzales, Mukasey thinks that waterboarding -- which the United States has prosecuted as a war crime -- might be legal, as long as the perpetrator is not in the military. Like Gonzales, Mukasey thinks that breaking the law is OK if the president orders you to do it, because the president’s order makes the lawbreaking legal. Mukasey abandons the idea that no one is above the law in favor of the idea that no law binds the president.

When Feinstein votes for Mukasey, she votes in favor of torture and allowing the president to create exceptions to the rule of law.

William Slattery

Los Angeles

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Where are the Christian voices in regard to the waterboarding issue? We all agree that torture is unacceptable. But we have a regime in Washington that seems to think that if we don’t call it torture, it isn’t torture. And now we have a man nominated to be the top law enforcer in our nation who wants to continue these semantic games. For more than 100 years, our own tribunals have treated waterboarding as a criminal act when performed by our enemies. What part of the Gospel says this could be acceptable?

Richard Murphy

Whittier

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The Senate Judiciary Committee’s consideration of Mukasey to become attorney general was handled poorly. Mukasey refused to regard waterboarding as torture for good reason: His nomination for attorney general would have been withdrawn because he would have put himself in the position of possibly having to prosecute people in the administration. What the committee should have done was to try to get him to promise to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the matter, which would have taken him out of the loop. I believe that almost all Americans would agree that torture is un-American and illegal.

John Boyden

Sierra Madre

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Now that Feinstein has explained why Mukasey has her vote, I’ll explain why she doesn’t have mine anymore. She votes the right way; she’s just representing the wrong party.

Elissa Tognozzi

Santa Monica