"* Michael Hayden as Bush's CIA Director:  Hayden implemented, oversaw and was the chief defender of Bush's illegal NSA spying program.  Weeks before the Senate vote, his nomination was supposedly "complicated by the disclosure that the spy agency under Hayden's control collected phone records on millions of Americans."  The new revelations of massive, secret spying on Americans under Hayden's watch prompted Dianne Feinstein to predict that the new surveillance scandal "is going to present a growing impediment to the confirmation of General Hayden and I think that is very regretted."

Two weeks later, Schumer voted to confirm Hayden.

"* Michael Mukasey as Attorney General:  During his confirmation hearings, Mukasey refused to say that waterboarding was torture and refused to repudiate the most radical Bush theories of executive power, including the right to detain American citizens indefinitely without charges and to attack Iran without Congressional authorization.

Schumer not only voted to confirm Mukasey, but his early announced support for Mukasey (as 1 of only 6 Democrats to do so) was, along with Feinstein's support, the event that assured Mukasey's confirmation..

"* John Bolton as Bush's U.N. Ambassador:  Bolton is about as extremist an ideologue as it gets, so much so that Senate Democrats and even some Senate Republicans joined together to refuse to vote on his nomination.   But not Schumer:

Dodd still lies in wait, hoping to filibuster Bolton again, but he does not appear to have the votes this time. AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, now backs Bolton, and the usually partisan Democrat Sen. Charles Schumer has indicated he will change his vote from last year and vote for cloture to end debate.

"* Charles Freeman as Obama's Director of the NIC:

Yesterday, Schumer proudly boasted of the role he played in torpedoing the Freeman nomination on the ground that Freeman made "statements against Israel" that Schumer deemed to be "way over the top."  Along those same lines, Politico's Ben Smith baselessly granted anonymity to someone Smith described as "an official at a major Jewish organization," who hid behind his anonymity and thundered:  "What [the failure of the Freeman nomination] showed is that there's no place for that kind of hostility to America's closest friend and most loyal ally."  And Antony Loewenstein notes that neocon fanatic Daniel Pipes is sending out mass emails crediting indicted AIPAC official/espionage suspect Steven Rosen with being the catalyst of the anti-Freeman campaign.

"You can break the law when spying on Americans.  You can store massive amounts of data about the activities of American citizens without the Congress authorizing or even knowing about it. You can give cover to torture, endorse the idea that Americans can be imprisoned without charges, and assert that the President can attack Iran without Congressional authority.  You can advocate aggressive wars against Iraq and Iran and even take positions too extremist and belligerent even for the Bush administration. 

That's all perfectly fine for Chuck Schumer.  All of that is perfectly consistent with occupying the highest and most powerful positions in Government.

"But you can't make "statements against Israel."  Even for far less important and influential positions, even for positions that require far-ranging debates of ideas, that will cause Chuck Schumer to call Rahm Emanuel and -- echoing the views of the further-right members of the Senate -- demand that you be disqualified from serving in the American government, and then run around boasting that making "over-the-top" statements "against Israel" is the supreme sin in American politics."

For more about the machinations surrounding the Freeman withdrawal check here.