Quick And Painful

I count 44 no votes for Attorney General Michael Mukasey, if you add in all the Presidentials who were scattered across the primary states. Really we're the dumbest majority there is. There were enough votes for a filibuster. It's another case of pretending you don't have the power you actually have.

Morons. And getting it done fast, like ripping off a band-aid, doesn't make it any better.

(And any Presidential who would have come back to Washington to lead a filibuster conditioned on signing the waterboarding ban would have gotten a major bump in the polls. Non-leaders running to be leaders of the free world.)

UPDATE: Shorter Glenn Greenwald: There's only a 60-vote requirement in the Senate when it's a bill Republicans don't like. Democrats go along to get along.

It's really infuriating. And he's right, this is vomit-inducing:

[The most amazing quote was from chief Mukasey supporter Chuck Schumer, who, before voting for him, said that Mukasey is "wrong on torture -- dead wrong." Marvel at that phrase: "wrong on torture." Six years ago, there wasn't even any such thing as being "wrong on torture," because "torture" wasn't something we debated. It would have been incoherent to have heard: "Well, he's dead wrong on torture, but . . . "

Now, "torture" is not only something we openly debate, but it's something we do. And the fact that someone is on the wrong side of the "torture debate" doesn't prevent them from becoming the Attorney General of the United States. It's just one issue, like any other issue -- the capital gains tax, employer mandates for health care, the water bill -- and just because someone is "dead wrong" on one little issue (torture) hardly disqualifies them from High Beltway Office.]

Congratulations, Democratic Senate. You just mainstreamed torture.