Eyewitness Report on Mukasey

[Poiuyt]

snip -

AG Mukasey was roughly twenty minutes into a speech defending the administration's torture policies and particularly arguing against prosecutions of people who made decisions in the aftermath of 9/11 (essentially arguing against what he believed amounted to the criminalization of policy differences).

Some seven or eight minutes prior to the incident a heckler start shouting, calling Mukasey a "tyrant." But the AG seemed unfazed by this; and members of the audience shouted the heckler down.

The eyewitness tells me that Mukasey seemed deeply in earnest about the argument he was making. And when he began to falter at first it appeared he was merely choking up. Soon, what at first appeared to be choking up blended into slurred words. And twenty to thirty seconds later he collapsed, his fall broken by a nearby FBI agent.

The room fell silent. After a moment there were shouts from the table where Mukasey's wife was sitting, calling to turn down the stage lights. A woman in an evening gown, presumably a doctor, ran up to the stage and the FBI agents hovering over Mukasey allowed her to attend to him.

The eyewitness told me that Mukasey collapsed at approximinately 10:06 and was taken off on a stretcher at approximately 10:33.

The one additional detail is that this eyewitness says that the medical personnel attending to Mukasey were talking to him for at least part of that period, at one point asking him "can you wiggle your toes." In other words, it appears that Mukasey did regain consciousness to at least some degree before being taken to the hospital.

more -

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/245321.php

[Bluebear]

1. 'twenty minutes into a speech defending the administration's torture policies' - wow.

[merh]

12. just goes to show you

God doesn't need lightning bolts.

[Kitty Herder]

14. Instant karma. nt

[originalpckelly]

2. It took them 27 minutes just to get him off the stage?

WTF? Damn, Washington, D.C. doesn't sound like a good place to get sick. For fucks sake he's the AG of the USA. Can you imagine how they'd fuck over one of us common folks?

[DS1]

6. His laywers had to call his HMO to get access to an ambulance

I was going to restrain myself, and not type this, but that's what the rest of us have to deal with.

[underseasurveyor]

7. You are one person around here

that should not ever be restrained.

[MadMaddie]

11. That's half of the golden hour...I am surprised they didn't

scoop him and sweep him into the ambulance.

[Fovea]

16. Some recent studies suggest

that the golden hour might be more like the golden ten minutes, IIRC.

[Stardust]

3. Naw, I won't say it.

[mike_c]

5. I will....

Best wishes for a speedy recovery, in hopes that Mukasey is in perfect health to serve his sentence or at least die in obscurity for his role in abetting the criminal Bush administration.

That's what you were going to say, wasn't it?

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. It was at the Federalist Society Meeting.

If you don't know about them, time to educate yourself.
They are to the courts and law what PNAC is to american hegemony.

[Ikonoklast]

9. All rugged individualists, doncha know.

They were all waiting for Mukasey to pull himself up by his bootstraps without government intervention.

[peacetalksforall]

10. They are writing and have written the right wing's New Consitution that Cheney and

Bush have been operating from. They are the counsel that help the Yoo's and Gonzales's to this administration come up with their counsel to Cheney and Bush. Leiberman belongs to the Federalist Society - or used to.

What is incredible is that someone in the audience belonging to the Federalist Society would heckle Mukasey.

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. May not have been a member who heckled.

There are ways of getting into "their" meetings to heckle.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MilesColtrane]

13. That bell's tolling for you too.

In the end, everybody gets sick and dies.
It's not a function of how good or evil you've been.

[Clovis Sangrail]

15. how people die isn't always a function of how good or evil they are

but aint it beautiful when it seems to work out that way?
;)

[Divine Discontent]

17. when someone like him, is doing what they do, you have a hard time feeling sad

but, I do wish him an epiphany of who he's really backing here, and a total and full recovery - it doesn't sound good for him... he may be done.