Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague, the Senator from Rhode Island, and I join him in strong opposition to the nomination of Mr. Steven Bradbury to be the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Mr. Bradbury is a deeply flawed nominee for many reasons, including his unwillingness to recuse himself from issues involving his former clients and dodging commitments to forgo accepting waivers for recusals. However, my opposition to his nomination is rooted in his troubling record while serving at the Department of Justice during the Bush administration. As we know, Mr. Bradbury was Acting Attorney General at the Department of Justice from 2005 to 2007 and led the Office of Legal Counsel there from 2005 to 2009. When he was nominated by President George W. Bush to be Assistant Attorney General in 2004, his nomination was so unacceptable that the majority leader at the time offered to confirm 84 stalled nominees in exchange for the withdrawal of his nomination. Let me repeat that. The Senate majority leader at the time was willing to accept 84 other nominees in exchange for President Bush withdrawing Mr. Bradbury's nomination. What Senators objected to then--and the reason I am so strongly opposed to Mr. Bradbury's nomination now--is that Mr. Bradbury is the chief architect of the legal justification that authorized waterboarding and other forms of enhanced interrogation techniques we used to hear a lot about during the last Bush Presidency.…”