Bush's 'Total Confidence'

Mukasey: "I would feel that it was. . . . "

Kennedy: "Now let me -- you say facts and circumstances. Let me ask you, under what facts and circumstances exactly would it be lawful to waterboard a prisoner?"

Mukasey: "For me to answer that question would be for me to do precisely what I said I shouldn't do.

"Because I would be, number one, imagining facts and circumstances that are not present and thereby telling our enemies exactly what they can expect in those -- in those -- in those eventualities. Those eventualities may never occur.

"I would also be telling people in the field, when I'm not faced with a particular situation, what they have to refrain from or not refrain from in a situation that is not performing and in situations that they may find analogous."

Mukasey, like his boss, would admit nothing. Here's an exchange with Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.):

Mukasey: "I can't contemplate any situation in which this president would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids."

Specter: "Well, he did just that in violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He did just that in disregarding the express mandate of the National Security Act to notify the Intelligence Committees. Didn't he?"

Mukasey: "I think we are now in a situation where both of those issues have been brought within statutes, and that's the procedure going forward."

Specter: "That's not the point. The point is that he acted in violation of statutes, didn't he?"

Mukasey: "I don't know whether he acted in violation of statutes."

From Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy's opening statement: "This President's administration has repeatedly ignored the checks and balances wisely placed on executive power by the Founders, who were concerned that they not replace the tyranny of George III with an American king.