Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
If you have the sort of mind that enjoys contemplating the square root of minus one and similar irrationalities, may I suggest the Tribune‘s lead editorial Friday. The subject was Michael Mukasey, the president’s nominee for attorney general. The Tribune called Mukasey a “brilliant jurist” who “deserves to be confirmed.” Yet Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee “are threatening to kill the nomination . . . unless Mukasey explicitly declares that a harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding is illegal.” And Mukasey won’t say that, even though he personally considers waterboarding “repugnant.”
If the Democrats had asked Mukasey if murder was illegal, would he have refused to “be backed into a legal corner”? Maybe the problem he and the Tribune are having is with what the legal definition of “illegal” is. Is this a new episode of parsers gone wild?
