USA TODAY - By Donna Leinwand The Senate confirmed Michael Mukasey as attorney general late Thursday over the objections of many Democrats.
In the narrowly divided Senate, six Democrats and one independent joined Republicans to support the retired federal judge. The vote was 53-40.
Democrats, who had initially embraced the nominee, withdrew their support after Mukasey stumbled on his second day of hearings.
Mukasey refused to declare that "waterboarding," a controversial interrogation technique that simulates drowning, is illegal.
President Bush said he would not send another nominee to Capitol Hill if the Senate rejected Mukasey, leaving an acting attorney general in charge of the agency.
Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, one of the Democrats to support the nomination, said he did not want a "caretaker" attorney general running the agency. The Justice Department "desperately needs a strong and independent leader at the helm to set it back on course," Schumer said.
Schumer, Mukasey's Senate patron, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said they backed the nomination because Mukasey had promised he would uphold a law banning waterboarding if Congress passed it. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Democratic Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Tom Carper of Delaware, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska also voted to confirm Mukasey.
Mukasey called waterboarding "repugnant," but would not definitively deem it illegal in testimony before the Judiciary Committee.
This nominee was not part of the policies and legal opinions with respect to torture," Feinstein said Thursday on the Senate floor. "We should not blame him for them."
This is a good man of the law," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said. "We're about to fix a problem in the Justice Department that needs to be fixed."
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who opposed Mukasey, said Bush would likely veto a law against waterboarding. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., also was opposed. "We need an attorney general who is going to be the people's lawyer, not the president's lawyer," she said.
We need a ... straightforward attorney general who is not afraid to stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said. Mukasey "is not the right person to lead the Justice Department."
Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York, was seen as a political outsider with no ties to President Bush's inner political circle.
His confirmation had initially seemed assured after the first day of his hearings last month. But Mukasey's answers to questions about torture and presidential power nearly derailed the nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mukasey replaces Alberto Gonzales, who resigned Sept. 17 amid allegations that he politicized hiring at the Justice Department and wrongly dismissed nine U.S. attorneys. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
