President Bush Nominates Mukasey For Attorney General...

...And I think I'm okay with that.

President Bush announced the nomination this morning of retired federal judge Michael Mukasey to replace ol' Gonzo as Attorney General (see video- here). No, he wouldn't be President Blueduck's choice, but I think it's a good pick by Bush standards.

Last week, it was reported that the President's top pick for the job was former Solicitor General, Ted Olson. This caused anger on the left, as Olson had a reputation of being a hardcore partisan warrior. Senator Majority Leader Reid announced publicly that Olson would not be confirmed by the Senate. One week later and voila... we get a different nominee. A rare victory for Senate Democrats. May it give them the courage they need to stand up on the war funding bill.

Many liberals remain apprehensive about Mukasey, who of course is a loyal conservative and Republican (Huffington Post chose to lead with his connections to the Guiliani campaign). But this isn't scandalous... Bush is a Republican president, he picked a Republican to run his Justice Department. Nothing inherently wrong with that.

The real issue is whether he will run an independent, competent Department, or allow it to remain a political arm of the Republican Party electoral apparatus, as Alberto Gonzales turned it into. There is no evidence yet to suggest the latter would be the case.

As one reassuring example of his judicial independence, Glenn Greenwald looks at how Mukasey handled the Jose Padilla case. As he notes, Mukasey "repeatedly defied the demands of the Bush administration... and ruled that Padilla was entitled to contest the factual claims of the government and to have access to lawyers. He issued these rulings in 2002 and 2003, when virtually nobody was defying the Bush administration on anything." He furthers add, though, that he also ruled that "President Bush had the authority to detain American citizens, even those detained on U.S. soil, as 'enemy combatants'." So while this ruling is a mixed bag, it does show that Mukasey's ideas on the rule of law are his own.

Perhaps it is this streak of independence that is worrying so many conservatives.

Bush cultist Mark Noonan over at Blogs for Bush laments that "One might have preferred a good fight over the AG post." Yes, that's what matters to the right... trumped-up political fights! Yay! His cohort at that site, Matt Margolis, is furious that Bush has 'appeased' the Democrats, also lamenting the loss of a fun fight over Ted Olson. He then expresses confusion at the idea that the President may have ever overstepped the Constitution. Being conservative isn't enough for the base. For them, you have to do what Alberto Gonzales did... and make John Ashcroft look like Ramsey Clark.

So, in conclusion, with Gonzales and Rove gone from their days of scheming, I think that Mukasey is the best nominee we can expect to keep the Justice Department safe for the remainder of Bush's term. I remain interested, of course, to hear his take on the Gonzales era of Justice-- and how he intends to undo the damage-- during the confirmation process.