AG nominee was terrorist target

John Podhoretz:

MICHAEL Mukasey - President Bush's nomi nee to be his next attor ney general - will be the first senior official in the U.S. government with the experience of living with an Islamofascist target on his forehead.

Mukasey presided over the two-year trial of the "Blind Sheik," Omar Abdel-Rahman, and his collaborators accused of plotting the 1993 strike on the World Trade Center.

For his labors, which were extraordinarily complex, Mukasey was considered a possible target for violent reprisal by Rahman's followers.

He was, in effect, an American Salman Rushdie.

Unlike Rushdie, Mukasey couldn't go into hiding: He was a sitting federal judge. But he and his wife basically lived for years inside a security cocoon.

For a decade - 24/7/365 - they were surrounded by a platoon of U.S. marshals, who stood guard outside their home and went everywhere with the Mukaseys - to the grocery store, the movie house, the bookstore, dinner with friends . . .

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This is, of course, not a qualification to serve as attorney general. But it represents a profound cost he incurred for a career as a public servant - a cost that should give the Ready-to-Fire Brigade that greets all presidential nominations a moment's pause when they start thinking about ginning up a campaign of character assassination.

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There is more including a pretty clever take on the naming of the Patriot Act. While Democrats may not directly oppose him, they will try to use his nomination to extort documents out of the White House they are not entitled to. It is just part of the bad faith shown by Democrats on the nomination process and it would be a mistake to expect statesmanship or patriotism from Democrat leaders in the Senate. With the exception of Joe Lieberman, who is only a nominal Democrat, they are a pretty sorry lot who all deserve rejection at the polls.

Opinion Journal takes a serious look at Judge Mukasey's back ground and notes:

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It remains to discover whether Senate Democrats will be willing to engage Judge Mukasey at this level of seriousness, or whether their primary target remains the Bush Presidency itself. After Ted Olson's name was floated for the job last week, Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy put out a statement that the AG nominee must be willing to "act as an independent check on this administration's expansive claims of virtually unlimited executive power." We thought Senator Leahy's party had to win the Presidency before writing Justice Department policy.

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Never presume good faith when Sen. Leahy is speaking about a nomination.