Mukasey Denied Law School Honors Because of Stance on Torture

March 5, 2008
Mukasey Denied Law School Honors Because of Stance on Torture

Boston College Law School will not award its highest honor to US Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey when he speaks at its May commencement, amid sharp criticism from students, faculty, and alumni over his invitation.

John Garvey, law school dean, announced the decision yesterday at a forum with graduating students held to discuss Mukasey's selection after weeks of intense debate on campus. Some alumni and students at the Jesuit school saw the move as a compromise to appease critics of Mukasey's controversial refusal to declare that an interrogation technique known as waterboarding constitutes torture.

Mukasey Refuses to Prosecute Bush Aides

March 1, 2008
Mukasey Refuses to Prosecute Bush Aides

Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Friday to refer the House's contempt citations against two of President Bush's top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers committed no crime.

As promised, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she has given the Judiciary Committee authority to file a lawsuit against Bolten and Miers in federal court.

"The House shall do so promptly," she said in a statement.

Mukasey Won't Comment on Waterboarding

January 29, 2008
Mukasey Won't Comment on Waterboarding

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday he will refuse to publicly say whether the interrogation tactic known as waterboarding is illegal, digging in against critics who want the Bush administration to define it as torture.

In a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, Mukasey said he has finished a review of Justice Department memos about the CIA's current methods of interrogating terror suspects and finds them to be lawful. He said waterboarding currently is not used by the spy agency.

Mukasey: Law is no longer supreme

October 30, 2007
Mukasey: Law is no longer supreme

President Bush's nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, was asked an important question
about Congress's power at his confirmation hearing. If witnesses claim executive privilege and
refuse to respond to Congressional subpoenas in the United States attorneys scandal — as
Karl Rove and Harriet Miers have done — and Congress holds them in contempt, would his
Justice Department refer the matter to a grand jury for criminal prosecution, as federal law
requires?

Mr. Mukasey suggested the answer would be no. That was hardly his only slap-down of Congress.
He made the startling claim that a president can defy laws if he or she is acting within the
authority "to defend the country." That is a mighty large exception to the rule that Congress's
laws are supreme.

AG Nominee Ordered Suspects Held Indefinitely

September 24, 2007
AG Nominee Ordered Suspects Held Indefinitely

Even though Mr. Awadallah was not charged at the time with any crime and had friends and family in San Diego who would vouch that he had no terrorist ties, Judge Mukasey ordered that he be held indefinitely, a ruling he made in the cases of several other so-called material witnesses in the Sept. 11 investigations. A prison medical examination later identified the bruises across his body.

Critics say a 1984 material witness law was abused by the Justice Department, and by Judge Mukasey and his judicial colleagues, to hold terrorist suspects indefinitely after Sept. 11 without having to accuse them of a crime and afford them the rights of a criminal defendant.