Attorney General Michael Mukasey is coming under intense criticism by Democrats for his handling of the scandal surrounding the CIA’s destruction of hundreds of hours of videotape showing interrogations inside secret CIA prisons. Within a single twenty-four-hour period, the Justice Department warned a federal judge to back off of his inquiry into the destruction of the tapes, told Congress to delay its own investigation into the matter, and refused to cooperate with congressional inquiries into the Justice Department’s role in the elimination of the tapes. The American Civil Liberties Union called the Justice Department’s actions a stunning rebuke of the constitutional system of checks and balances.