AP remarked in one report that he was observed to be awake and possibly talking in the ambulance.

From the initial reports of slurring and then rapid unconsciousness, it could be nothing more than a precipitously dropped blood sugar level. Let's hope it's nothing more severe than that.

It sounds like he could have had a stroke.

No matter how much I disagree with him, I still wish him well and a speedy recovery.

he may have suffered a stroke from eyewitness accounts. damn

There's an update on TPM:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/245321.php

Seems ironic that he collapsed while defending torture...

Mukasey collapsed while defending torture? Don't bother to include my name on the get well soon card.

That's such bullshit--"my thoughts are with him and his family." What the fuck does that even mean? Are you sitting around just ... thinking about Michael Mukasey? Are you thinking about his family members whose names you don't even know and whose faces you couldn't pick out of a crowd if your life depended on it?

"My thoughts are with his family." This is the secular version of "He is in my prayers" and guess what: it's just as stupid.

Jeebus: I said it because it was true. It's easy to feel for his family members without having any idea what they look like.

When you go to work for the devil, your heart's going to give out eventually

A pig almost as disgraceful as his predecessor and all people can do is offer platitudes about thoughts and prayers being with him.

He's just one more piece of war criminal filth who belongs in a cell in The Hague being prosecuted for his war crimes. Typical Bush administration human garbage.

Yeah, I'm sure it sucks when your husband/father/grandfather/apologist for torture keels over. I'm sure they're real sad right now.

Shit like that happens every second. Wait five seconds: someone else had a stroke. Wait another five: another stroke. And since you started reading this like twenty people have straight-up died. Let's not pretend that we spend time "feeling for them."

jeebus: I don't tell you what you do or don't think or feel. Why do you think you know what I think or feel?

All right, if you insist, I guess you really are literally sitting there tonight "feeling for" his family, whatever that even means. If you say so I believe you.

But if so then you are very, very unusual. Not bad, just ... not normal in this respect.

As far as I'm concerned Mukasey can rot in Hell.

The man was giving a speech defending the use of torture. The people listening, including his wife, were wearing evening clothes. This was a group of "respectable" powerful people supporting torure. They prayed for his recovery. Which God did they pray to? The God of torture? The God of bombing civilians? Why in the hell would anyone wish for the recovery of a war criminal who will, if given the opportunity, commit more war crimes?

Anon >"...Typical Bush administration human garbage."

Quite the understatement.

Hmmm, maybe that god person does actually exist & isn`t really a Republican after all.

Lotta change goin on these days.

"...Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid...." - Voltaire

Probably just a simple case of a vasovagal reaction (neurogenic syncope). You stand for too long, don't move your legs, blood pools in them - if your normal blood pressure is on the low end of normal, can happen to anyone.

It's why so many guys drop during wedding ceremonies. You usually regain consciousness within 20 seconds after going horizontal.

Vital "signs" not statistics.

When he was appointed, I had hoped better of him.

Mukasey is a puke but let's hope he's ok.

Vicious partisan idealogy suggests...blah blah blah [insert bitter sentiment here]

Fuck that. Hope he's ok.

Let's consider the TPM eyewitness account.

There had been a heckler, who had been subdued by the audience.

The heckling may have been what made him snap. He was defending the indefensible: the US torturing innocent prisoners in its Gulag in the Caribbean, on the same day that a Federal Judge had ordered the release of five prisoners, and not long after a similar order concerning 17 Chinese innocent citizens. Both orders will of course be ignored by the US military, which is trying to pretend that the it hasn't overreacted wildly with Guantanamo.

And Mukasey is actually making the point that people may have overreacted, due to 9/11, and that one should therefore possibly consider amnesty for those who made those decisions (and who did the very imaginative torturing of the innocent prisoners who have now been incarcerated without Habeas Corpus and proper legal representation for seven years.)

No wonder his brain suddenly blew a valve.

The Banality of Evil.

Republican Party.

Mukasey.

Mukasey defends torture, claiming that torture is just a simple policy difference, and that Republicans who either advocated torture as well as those following orders to torture shouldn't be held accountable because it was all a simple policy difference.

Of course, the real "policy difference" was between Republican torture-advocators/practitioners and the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and basic human decency.

So, while I hope for Mukasey's speedy recovery, I hope he recovers enough to stand trial someday...along with so many in the Federalist Society audience who've similarly done so much damage to our democracy in pursuit of their "permanent Republican majority," or as I like to call it "The Permanent Banality of Evil Majority," because only Communist monopolists or Nazi totalitarians would advocate such a nefarious goal for any freedom-loving society.

If a man/woman is sentenced to death and dies in prison before their execution, do you "hold them in your thoughts/pray for them and their family" because they died in an unexpected way? If Mukasey dies or is disabled by a stroke or whatever this is, does he deserve more sympathy than if he is tried and convicted and sentenced to prison because Nature passed judgment before man could? He has already committed crimes, in my opinion, so is deserving of justice. Because there is no trial and no verdict, yet, he gets a pass and sympathy from those who, on every other count, hold him in contempt. Hundreds if not thousands have been unjustly held in prison without charges, yet they are treated as guilty. Why not treat Mukasey and his like the same? Shun him and abuse him and his family, just as he has those he considers guilty, without legitimate cause. It's not fair and just? Then, look in the mirror and tell the face looking back that it is not fair to accuse you of crimes not yet charged or tried. In the end, justice will be done.

I am committed to Oneness through Justice and transformation
peace,
st john

peace,
st john

From a medical point of view, what are the chances that a stroke could ensue from emotional stress?

As per the account:

"Attorney General Mukasey was roughly twenty minutes into a speech defending the administration's torture policies "

possibility #1: he was going to have a stroke anyway

possibility #2: he really believes in torture and his passion in defending it in the presence of the heckler caused the stroke

possibility #3: In his heart he knows that since becoming AG, he's violated every principle that he 's vowed to uphold in every job he's ever had and the internal contradictions caused the stroke.

possibility #4: There is a God and this was his or her warning shot across the bow of the S.S. Mukasey.

jeebus wrote
>"Yeah, I'm sure it sucks when your husband/father/grandfather/apologist for torture keels over. I'm sure they're real sad right now.

Isn't the point of being decent human beings that we don't want anyone to suffer, including the ones we don't like? If we're not sorry to hear of an actual human suffering, then we're no better than those who condone torture. And presumably his family are very sad and worried--you can be horrified by family members' views but not stop loving them.

>"...And since you started reading this like twenty people have straight-up died. Let's not pretend that we spend time "feeling for them."

The reason we're thinking of him and his family and/or praying for them is that this is an actual human that we know of who is suffering. The thousands of people who have died on earth since I clicked to this website aren't known to me, but I have been praying today for those people that I *do* know of who are sick and/or dying. That connection with individual people, even people we don't know personally, is what keeps communities functioning and keeps the social contract alive.

So, while I hope for Mukasey's speedy recovery ...

That's the spirit. I must say that it is very amusing to read sentiments, further up the thread, that exude the same indiscriminate vengefulness that led the nation into the swamp of tortureland in the first place. (Why I find that amusing rather than deeply discouraging at this particular moment, I'm not sure.)

He was simply interpreting, in dance, what he and the rest of the Bush administration have done to this country.

I could care less what happens to people who openly support torture and defend torturers against political prosecutions. This guy is a supreme asshole and anyway to get rid of him so he can do no more damage is fine with me.

Thankfully he is on his last days in this criminal adminstration. Good riddance!

You stand for too long, don't move your legs, blood pools in them - if your normal blood pressure is on the low end of normal, can happen to anyone. - flubber (1:36)

Kinda like "stress positions"?

I hope he recovers and takes this episode as a chance to change his positions on torturing people. If thee is a deity, and if that deity becomes the moral judge of where we "land" for eternity, at this point, given Mukasey's moral acumen, he would surly be spending long periods of eternity in the corner...

Sounds like a mild stroke- given that he had immediate attention that probably saved his life.

My feelings are mixed. I am no fan of the Bush administration, and am not trusting of the AG. Still, I think it is important not to adopt the vitriolic stance that we have seen so long in conservative culture. If readers and commenters here cannot show magnanimity and restraint, then how can it be expected of the likes of Fox News, the WSJ editorial pages or Rush Limbaugh?

God has given him blood to drink.

God doesn't like torture.

This close to having one fewer war criminal on the planet.

Oh well, maybe next time.

If you believe that:
. a) evil, irredeemably rotten motherfuckers exist in this world
and:
. b) it is a better thing for this world if these
. . said motherfuckers are rendered incapable
. . of doing further harm

then I think it is unreasonable to wish the motherfuckers well. The right routinely takes advantage of the left's inordinate decency, and we need to get over that -- it ain't like Mukasey is a booster for supply-side economics, he's a booster for unspeakable crimes. If he dies, his family will likely get over it in a matter of weeks. The torture victims of Guantanamo will suffer for the rest of their lives.

Would it be too snarky to suggest that the cognitive dissonance of his prepared remarks caused massive turbulence in his carotid blood flow and thus reduced the blood supply to his brain? I mean, even the Bushites have their limits.

From the TPM account:

"Attorney General Mukasey was roughly twenty minutes into a speech defending the administration's torture policies...."

Considering this, my symathies and hopes for his recovery are, frankly, extremely limited.

I find it very difficult to muster up sympathy for such a prominent torture-supporter. He condones and supports and has an active role in doing much, much worse to other people. I don't see any reason to wish him well; I don't care how he's doing.

I don't think it is 'vengeful' to think so. Strokes happen. They happen all the time to much better people than Mukasey. Noone brought this on him. He didn't get shot or poisoned or anything.

Isn't the point of being decent human beings that we don't want anyone to suffer, including the ones we don't like? If we're not sorry to hear of an actual human suffering, then we're no better than those who condone torture.

Completely false analogy. There's a world of difference between having no sympathy when a torture apologist suffers and being a torture apologist oneself. One person is merely not offering sympathy, the other is actively dedicating his life to the cause of evil.

And presumably his family are very sad and worried--you can be horrified by family members' views but not stop loving them.

Presumably the Goering and Himmler families were worried as well during the Nuremberg trials, but I don't know how many people said "my thoughts are with the Goering family" upon hearing of his suicide before his scheduled execution.

Look, since the word "torture" seems, incredibly, to have become normalized in American discourse, let's pretend that Mukasey had been giving a speech defending the rape of criminal suspects (and this is not far off, since we know that some prisoners held by this regime were threatened with rape, sexually abused, and in some cases actually raped). If, in the middle of a sentence where he said "it's perfectly fine to rape prisoners we suspect have committed crimes in order to get them to talk" Mukasey had been struck down, would you really -- honestly -- feel any sympathy for him whatsoever?

Helena Montana - that's very clever.

There was a disgusting display yesterday in the senate with sex pervert Larry Craig honoring convicted felon and grifter "Uncle" Ted Stevens, and the rest of those no account jerk wads giving him a standing ovation.

Now Muckasey, an open and admitted advocate of torture and destroyer of the Constitution, approved by the same semen sacks in the Senate, somehow merits sympathy?

I for one am not enlightned enough to wish him well or pray for his recovery.

Justice, if there is such a thing, would see him painfully linger in a Walter Reed ward (the one with the mold problem and rats) for at least seven years unable to move or speak, while fully aware of his condition before dying of a staph infection. Cheney, Gonzalez, Ashcroft, Bush, Rice, Rove and all the rest of the Bushies could share the ward

Isn't the point of being decent human beings that we don't want anyone to suffer, including the ones we don't like? If we're not sorry to hear of an actual human suffering, then we're no better than those who condone torture. And presumably his family are very sad and worried--you can be horrified by family members' views but not stop loving them.

After 9/11, did you know anyone who said "my thoughts are with the Mohammed Atta family and I mourn with them for the loss of their loved one"?

Reading all these "may he wither and die" comments really warms my heart. And I am NOT being sarcastic. While I'm not able to say with certainty who deserves to suffer, I feel entitled to make educated guesses.

Count me in w/the heartless (read: honest) MFers who say: 'bout time!!

Why should I feel sympathy for this skunk? He has disgraced himself with his performance as AG. I'll save my sympathy for, say, the women & children of Pakistan who get bombed by our aerial drones.

Or for those of us who had the Steelers minus the points last Sunday :)

screw muckasey and the horse he rode in on.

I wonder how he would be without a good healthcare plan? ER anyone?

peace,
st john

>After 9/11, did you know anyone who said "my
>thoughts are with the Mohammed Atta family and I
>mourn with them for the loss of their loved one"?

Actually, after 9/11, not a lot of people around here (in the Antipodes) seemed to single out individual people who had died in that way. I do know people who prayed for all who had died and the families of all who had died, including the terrorists. And some singled out the families of the terrorists as people in particularly difficult situations, since they'd also suffered the loss of loved ones, but the ones they were mourning were hated by the rest of the world. Most of those I was talking to live in Canada, Australia or New Zealand, though, so it was easier for people to share thoughts like that.

Obviously that way of thinking isn't common or popular, but I still believe that wishing suffering on others and taking delight in the suffering of others does diminish one's own humanity.

I'm not at all sorry that Mukasey isn't at work today and I hope he's promptly put on permanent sick leave and replaced by someone whose values are closer to mine. But my values include respecting the humanity of others, and I'll stick to them as well as I can, rather than letting nasty people drag me down to their level. I don't think there's a winner in the "Who can hate whom the most" stakes and schadenfreude doesn't make anyone look good.