Dear Senator Feinstein,

As a volunteer on your last re-election campaign, I am very disappointed in your decision to vote in favor of Michael Mukasey as our next Attorney General. The position on torture for our country’s top law enforcement official should be unequivocable, and yet you voted for a man who refused to call waterboarding torture, despite the practice having already been defined as torture internally by the Department of Justice.

Whether or not a vote against Mukasey in this situation would have defeated his nomination is irrelevant. In this time of crisis, you did not stand up and defend our civil liberties as Americans and that makes you an accessory to whatever breaches of justice will inevitably follow.

You have failed your state and your country with this vote. I hope the path that takes you forward will be guided by a greater moral compass than that which has led you so far astray. Good luck.

Blaise Nutter