Michael Mukasey, the president's nominee for attorney general, is a very dangerous man. His predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, was an incompetent buffoon, a hack from Texas who launched the campaign to turn the country into a military dictatorship in his "secret" memos ridiculing the Geneva Conventions.

Mukasey is a charming, intelligent man who talks and acts like a wise lawyer on television. However, he believes the president can ignore statutes passed by Congress by virtue of his power as commander in chief. The separation of powers, the essence of American democracy, is thereby abolished, and the president becomes a dictator who can do anything he deems necessary to defend the country. There is no review either of his decisions or his judgments about the powers of the commander in chief or the specific threat to the country. The president in theory is as absolute in his power as Stalin was in Russia. No one reviews him, no one rules on him, no one questions his decisions. The next step will be FBI men in jackboots appearing at the doors of presidential critics in the middle of the night.