Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

Until last night, the criminal responsibility for the torturing of terror suspects by the U.S. government was entirely on the heads of George Bush, Dick Cheney, their senior aides and the civilian and uniformed military leadership who approved and implemented "advanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding.

Late in the evening yesterday, however, the U.S. Senate, including all Republicans who were present, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CN) and six senior Democrats, willingly assumed responsibly for Bush's torture policies by rubberstamping his nominee, Michael Mukasey, to be the next U.S. attorney general.

Mukasey --- a crony of Rudy Giuliani, the Republican presidential candidate who, during his tenure as New York City mayor, revealed fascistic tendencies that are alarmingly similar to those of George Bush and Dick Cheney --- indicated during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he will continue to greenlight Bush's torture policies.

Now the question is, will Mukasey also assist Bush, Cheney and the rest in trying to avoid war-crimes charges after they leave office.

The six senior Democratic senators who voted to confirm Mukasey and thus condone torture were:

We've suggested that our friends at Why Tuesday? change their tagline ("Fixing our voting system, one question at a time") for what seems to us an obvious reason. They're doing good work so far on their new video blog site, but given the topics they're dealing with, we'd suggest our system is already "fixed" enough thanks.

That said, they recently issued a candidate challenge to all of the presidential candidates, asking them to respond to three specific questions concerning their plans for Election Reform.

We're hoping in the near future, they will add the following question to their challenge: "Do you support a paper ballot --- not a 'paper trail' or a 'paper record,' but a paper ballot, and one that is actually counted --- for every vote cast in America?"

In the meantime, we'd encourage those of you out there going to candidate events (both Republican and Democrat) to ask such a question of the candidates if you can, and capture it on video. Do that, and send us the clip (or a link to it on YouTube, etc.) and we'll get it up on The BRAD BLOG, and perhaps even on Why Tuesday? as well.
So far, the first response they've been able to get to their challenge is from Joe Biden when WT?'s Exec. Director Jacob Soboroff ran into him recently at a D.C. coffee shop. Biden's comments are at the right.

We'll note that, while not asked about it specifically, he first refers to a "paper trail," but later refers to a "paper ballot" and wants a standardized system used across the country. He also mentions that full public financing of presidential and congressional elections will do more than anything to reform the system as he sees it. Let us know what you think.