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Joseph Biden says that unless Michael Mukasey renounces waterboarding and the legal immunity of a president, he won’t vote for him:

My support for Judge Mukasey’s nomination depends in part on him stating clearly that waterboarding constitutes torture and that the president is bound by the law.

Has Joe Biden started to regret his failure to show up for the Mukasey hearings on his own committee? Better late than never, Senator Biden. Now follow through.

Senator Chris Dodd has also made a statement of opposition:

Mr. Mukasey’s position that the President does not have to heed the law disqualifies him from being the chief attorney for the United States. We have seen for too long, and at great expense to our national security, an Administration that has systematically attacked the rule of law and turned our Justice Department into a political wing of the White House. I’m afraid that Mr. Mukasey as Attorney General would be more of the same.

These statements aren’t coming out of the blue. Politicians respond to public pressure. So if you haven’t, get off your duff and press already. Look up your Senators’ phone numbers here and give them a call, telling them to vote AGAINST the confirmation of Michael Mukasey unless Mukasey:

1. Affirms that the practice of waterboarding legally qualifies as torture, and

2. Repudiates his statement that the president can violate the law if “what goes on outside the statute nonetheless lies within the authority of the President to defend the country.”

Then write a letter to the editor of your local paper. My local newspaper apparently decided to pass on the first Mukasey letter I wrote, so I wrote ‘em another one this weekend:

I encourage readers to type “18 U.S.C. 2340″ into a search engine and
read the federal statute on torture. Under the law, one definition of
torture is government action upon a detainee that produces “the threat
of imminent death.” Waterboarding has been carried out in history by
the Spanish Inquisition, the Khmer Rouge, and the Bush administration.
It is a practice in which a detainee is bound and made to feel as
though they are about to drown. As a threat of imminent death,
waterboarding is covered under federal law on torture. And yet George
W. Bush’s nominee for the post of Attorney General, Michael Mukasey,
has repeatedly refused to characterize waterboarding as torture
(Dispatch, 10/27). This leaves me wondering: is Mukasey ignorant of
federal law, or simply unwilling to follow it? In an America that
respects the rule of law, Michael Mukasey is unfit to be our Attorney General.

I hope they publish it. If even just a handful of letters on the topic get sent in to a paper, I figure they’ll have to print at least one.