This’ll have Keith Olbermann spitting flames tonight.

Nomination passes, 11-8. Sen. Leahy scolds disruptive members of the public. Sen. Kennedy is giving a statement lambasting Mukasey. He actually fumed about the “reckless disregard of the rule of law.” Yes, Teddy Kennedy did.

He’ll get a floor vote, and unless there’s a meteoric change, he’ll get confirmed.

This whole waterboarding brouhaha has been an obvious exercise in political gotchas. The Democrats tried to either drive a wedge between the nominee and the administration or to get him to say something that they could use to derail him. Mukasey didn’t fall into their trap.

As for waterboarding, it’s been used a total of three times, and at least one of those was as close to the ticking time bomb scenario as we’re likely to see. It was also banned in 2003, so it’s not only not relevant to the current state of the war, it didn’t lead to the slippery slope of torture that liberals from Andrew Sullivan to Olbermann to Patrick Leahy whine about. It didn’t. That’s a hard fact that they really ought to deal with at some point.