Michael Mukasey is one step closer to becoming only the second Jewish attorney general in United States history, after the Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to advance his nomination to the Senate floor.
The decision virtually ensured his confirmation before the end of the month.
Mukasey has been ensnarled in bitter controversy over waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique used in interrogations. The 11-8 vote came after two key Democrats accepted his vow to enforce any law Congress might enact against the method.
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Mukasey, a 66-year-old retired federal judge and Modern-Orthodox Jew from New York, graduated from Columbia University in 1963. He later received a degree in law from Yale. If his nomination is approved, Mukasey will become the second Jew in U.S. history to preside as attorney general.
The first Jewish U.S. attorney general, Edward Hirsch Levi, was appointed to the post is 1975, with the task of restoring the federal justice department's greatly diminished status following the Watergate affair.
Mukasey was appointed to the bench in 1987 by the late Republican president Ronald Reagan. He retired last year and opened a private law firm.
The nomination of Mukasey to replace Alberto Gonzales as the chief U.S. law enforcement official now goes to the Senate floor where a vote is expected before the end of the month.
Gonzales resigned two months ago in the midst of congressional investigation over his handling of the dismissal of eight U.S. prosecutors. Democrats said the firings were politically motivated. The dispute mushroomed into doubts about the credibility of Gonzales, a longtime friend and adviser to President George W. Bush.
Mukasey's nomination represents a victory for Bush as he heads into his last 14 months in office with a dismal showing in opinion polls over his handling of the Iraq war and other issues.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, who suggested Mukasey to the White House in the first place, countered that the nominee's statements against waterboarding and for purging politics from the Justice Department amount to the best deal Democrats could get from the Bush administration.
"If we block Judge Mukasey's nomination and then learn in six months that waterboarding has continued unabated, that victory will seem much less valuable," he wrote in an op-ed in Tuesday's editions of The New York Times.
However, the Democratic committee chairman, Patrick Leahy called Mukasey's promise disingenuous. "Unsaid, of course, is the fact that any such prohibition would have to be enacted over the veto of this president," said Leahy.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, said her vote for Muksaey's confirmation came down in part to practicality. "If Mukasey's nomination were killed," she said, "Bush would install an acting attorney general not subject to Senate confirmation and make recess appointments to fill nearly a dozen other empty jobs at the top of Justice."
"I don't believe a leaderless department is in the best interests of the American people or of the department itself," Feinstein said. Bush, she added, "appointed this man because he believes he is mainstream."
Support for Mukasey from Schumer and Feinstein virtually assured the former federal judge the majority vote he needed to be favorably recommended by the 19-member committee.
Many Democrats came out in opposition to Mukasey after he refused to say unequivocally that so-called waterboarding - an interrogation technique that makes the victim believe he is drowning - is tantamount to torture and thus illegal under domestic and international law.
Mukasey rankled Democrats during his confirmation hearing by saying he was not familiar with the waterboarding technique and could not say whether it was torture.
Even Sen. Arlen Specter, the panel's ranking Republican, called that explanation a flimsy excuse and suggested instead that Mukasey declined to call waterboarding illegal torture because he wanted to avoid putting at legal risk U.S. officials who may have engaged in the practice.
But Specter said that outlawing waterboarding rests with Congress. He disclosed that he had talked with Mukasey a day earlier and received an assurance that the nominee would back up any such legislation and quit if Bush ignores his opinion.
Thus, Specter said, Mukasey had won his support.
Legal experts cautioned that if Mukasey called it torture, that effectively could have constituted an admission that the United States engaged in war crimes. It could also commit him to prosecuting U.S. officials even before he takes office.
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