October 19, 2007 9:47 AM

Was Mukasey Forced to Drink The Kool-Aid?

The second day of Senate confirmation hearings for Michael Mukasey, President Bush's nominee for Attorney General, didn't go as well as his first day.

On his first day Mukasey was largely honest and reasonable and seemed destined to sail into the vacant post left by horrifyingly embarrassing Alberto Gonzalez's departure.

Later that night, however, Mukasey seemed to have been sternly reminded to stay "on message." Because the next day, when Democratic Senators got down to asking the standard litmus test questions with the gimmie answers that Americans resolved once and for all at exactly 11:35 AM, August 9, 1974, Mukasey was on "message once" again.

On message about which questions? Questions like:

RICHARD NIXON: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.
DAVID FROST: By definition?
RICHARD NIXON: Exactly. Exactly.

The handful of Nixon-loving dead-enders who seethed for thirty years that everyone else in the world was wrong, a clique of delusional wingnuts otherwise known as The Bush Administration, got Mukasey back on message.

From The New York Times:

On the second day of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey went further than he had the day before in arguing that the White House had constitutional authority to act beyond the limits of laws enacted by Congress, especially when it came to national defense.

Democratic Senator Leahy called him out: “I don’t know whether you received some criticism from anybody in the administration last night after your testimony,” he said, “but I sensed a difference, and a number of people here, Republican and Democratic alike, have sensed a difference.”

The King Nixon theory of the Executive holds that constitutionally-mandated oversight puts undue restrictions on the power of the President. The president in their bizarro world is like a democratically-elected despot.

NIXON: ...Just so that one does not get the impression that a president can run amok in this country and get away with it, we have to have in mind that a president has to come up before the electorate.

BUSH: Well, we had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election.

Remember, as long as an anti-Constitution conservative takes/wins the Presidency, everything is fair game. Everything - even torture. Consider that when you join Working Assets to Buy one Voter, Get one Free.