Michael B Mukasey

The Senate confirmed Mark Filip, 41, a federal judge from Chicago, as Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey's second-in-command, restoring the top tier of a Justice Department that had lost many of its officials to a scandal over the firings of nine federal prosecutors.

Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey left George Washington Hospital less than a day after collapsing as he gave a speech. Mukasey, 67, was hospitalized overnight for observation and underwent routine tests, spokeswoman Gina Talamona said. She called the episode "a fainting spell." A person who attended the dinner of the Federalist Society where Mukasey collapsed Thursday night said he was shaking and perhaps slurring his words before he fell.

A federal grand jury in Charlotte indicted 26 suspected members of an international gang accused in a cross-border drug ring. U.S. Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey unsealed a federal indictment that charges people believed to be members of the MS-13 gang with racketeering through a drug trafficking ring that sold cocaine, marijuana and narcotics and with committing multiple robberies.

Re "Mukasey's reply draws more fire," Oct. 31 For those like the attorney general nominee, Michael B. Mukasey, who aren't sure if waterboarding constitutes torture, I suggest a simple solution: Keeping their identity anonymous, turn them over to the CIA for a day. Then tell the CIA that they have valuable information -- so valuable that waterboarding should be used to get them to talk.

Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey wants Congress to act to prevent the release of thousands of criminals from federal prison under new crack cocaine sentencing rules. In testimony prepared for a House hearing today, Mukasey indicates his support for the new guidelines that reduce federal prison time for crack cocaine convicts -- but only for first-time, nonviolent offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission rules taking effect in less than a month would let nearly 20,000 federal inmates seek reductions in their crack cocaine sentences.

The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey for transcripts of interviews with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and former presidential advisor Karl Rove during the federal inquiry into the leak of then-CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. The subpoena requests all documents from the office of former Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald relating to interviews of Bush, Cheney and their aides that were conducted outside the presence of a grand jury investigating the leak.

President Bush invoked executive privilege to keep Congress from seeing the FBI report of an interview with Vice President Dick Cheney and other records related to the administration's leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003. At the time, the administration was trying to undercut former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's criticism of Bush's rationale for the Iraq war. Wilson and Plame are married. The House Oversight Committee had subpoenaed Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey to turn over the documents.