I just read paragraph one of Sen. Shumer's op-ed in today's NYT:

I AM voting today to support Michael B. Mukasey for attorney general for one critical reason: the Department of Justice — once the crown jewel among our government institutions — is a shambles and is in desperate need of a strong leader, committed to depoliticizing the agency’s operations.

The Boston Globe gets it.

In his Senate confirmation hearings, Mukasey refused to say whether he thought interrogation methods such as the simulation of drowning, known as waterboarding, should be considered torture. Showing fairly shallow knowledge for the next standard-bearer of justice, he said, "I don't know what's involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional."

One would think that by now the Democrats would have developed the spine to stand up to such nonsense nearly seven years into George W. Bush's presidency, which has sunk America's global moral standing with the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, the prison torture scandal of Abu Ghraib, and the many killings of innocent Iraqis by soldiers and contractors.

...

Mukasey may be no Alberto Gonzales, but he has already signaled that he will be guided not by his own moral and legal compass, but by Bush's.

With every rationalization that lets the Bush administration off the hook, the Democrats render themselves meaningless.