Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft Resigns
andyring writes "In a move that will undoubtedly make many /. readers jump for joy (although perhaps not myself), Attorney General John Ashcroft announced he will resign, according to multiple news sources. While many here dislike him, others have more favorable opinions of him. He became the point man on the USA Patriot Act, which typically ignites harsh opinions on both sides of the aisle."
Reader cnsc1rtr , referring to the AP's version of the story, writes "He gave Bush a five-page, handwritten letter in which he stated, 'The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.'"
At what cost?
For the Supreme Court...
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
So they figured out how anthrax from US Army labs was mailed to various members of congress and media outlets, and captured those responsible?
Oh...they haven't done that, eh?
Well, at least gays can't marry.
Like who, Joseph Stalin is dead?
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Yeah, he did change the FBI. They no longer need search warrents, and they have no respect of our civil liberties. If you ask me, he damaged the USA. We were a more free people before he came to power. And don't forget, Ashcroft was the guy who lost his senate seat because the people of his state elected a dead guy rather than have 6 more years of him.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Your thinking short term. Now that he isn't a AG, he can be a SCJ.
Before 9/11, Ashcroft's top priority was targetting pornography. Since 9/11, he has been embarassingly ineffective in capturing terrorists.
Not to be mean.... On one hand I want Bush to leave.
On the other hand, I want to see Bush-voters who cheered "4 more years" to suffer financial & economical devastation. Nothing against you, but if you wanted a president who has more involvement in Iraq than your own country, you mind as well turn in your U.S. citizenship. Before you mod me down to -100, I am just fighting for the U.S middle class.
'The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.'
This is and example of one thing the Bush administration understands, how to kill discussions. The trick is to say something so outlandish and WRONG that everyone who pays attention will know as wrong and the discussion dies there, while at the the same time, the less observant get the desired impression. The fun part is, if you have a valid argument that is even remotely related (rational or emotional level) against the individual, a lot of people will dismiss you without hearing you thinking 1. you are on the same level as them (that's just how politicians are) or 2. you're a conspiracy nut. (he's just reading too much into this political nonsense).
Really impressive use of the media if you ask me. If you say enough factually wrong soundbites, people will dismis you AND the people who are after you. Those who don't dismis you will think you are amazing.
Burn Hollywood Burn
You have to understand... the US government has done an EXCEPTIONAL job of keeping its people scared and ignorant. Hence, the election results. People in this country have no fucking clue as to what's going on, and those who do, get it from TV, which just spews out gov't propoganda designed to keep people fucking terrified. It's very Machiavellian, actually.
We don't have an educated, informed population. Apparently, half of the US really IS made up of Jesus Freak, Nascar worshipping bigots.
I don't respond to AC's.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
Reno let the rabid dogs have a special prosecutor, who spent seventy millions bucks to mount an impeachment fishing expedition. What else would you want?? JEEZ.
And it all came up empty.
Now Aschroft? Snatched defeat from the claws of victory, and completely let Microsoft walk after it was convicted, fried, toasted by the Reno Justice Department. Dragged his heels on the Enron investigation -- helped Bush run interference as the billions were stolen. Slow-walked the Valerie Plame treason investigation past the election. Didn't investigate massive election interference in both 2000 and now 2004. Let the Pubs walk on using Homeland Security apparatus to interfere in the Texas redistricting. Won't instruct Bush to comply with the Supreme Court's stunning orders to let the concentration camp prisoners have access to a fair trial - they are ignoring the law of the land and performing show trials. He rammed the Patriot act into law, effectively repealing at least three ammendments in the Bill of Rights.
And the FBI was gutted by Freeh, the Clinton appointee who turned for the impeachment elves and committed 50 full time agents to investigating Clinton's sex lives while Al Queda was moving into position. Freeh "reformed" the FBI by eliminating an entire middle level of analysts, and "streamlining" the flow of information from below into the executive offices - ie, him. The warning from field agents were ignored because experienced analysts no longer existed to read the damned reports.
The FBI was "changed around" by Freeh. I doubt much that Ashcroft did didley to restore the analysts back to duty. Waht Bush/Ashcroft are doing, really, is to make every information asset we have responsible to and report to the executive, ie Bush. Not only do we not have the middle level of analysts back, we instead have a pack of political true-believers distilling info for the President's consumption. It's a wreck.
His resignation was rumored for over a year. no surprise. However, his replacement will be much worse.
AWESOME.
So, can I have my rights back, now?
So says a fellow using the words "Go back to jesusland, redneck", showing exactly how seriously his opinion should be weighed.
not to be a killjoy, but has it occurred to anyone that ashcroft is resigning as attorney general so as to prepare himself for a nomination to the supreme court?
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
Ummm, we are. Been to a "free speech zone" lately?
Conseravatism is a very subjective word. I wouldn't consider any neo-con to be a conservative, but I tend to use it in casual conversation to mean someone that tends to vote Republican.
... and before I get flamed, fascism is simply authoritarianism on social issues and a corporatist economic policy.
In my opinion, Ashcroft is a fascist
Eisenhower, Bradley, Halsey, MacArthur, etc all were permitted to accept honorary knighthood from the Brits. It's just something cute nowadays. Back in 1787 it was a real consideration.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
It's unlikely that Ashcroft would make it onto the Supreme Court, but Bush might use him as a stalking horse. Nominate him, watch the country go crazy, watch the Democrats use up all their time and political capital fighting off Ashcroft... then when everyone is worn out from blocking the Ashcroft nomination, Bush appoints a relative unknown who turns out to be as bad or worse.
The Democrats need to watch out for this, and keep up the resistance against anyone on the right wing that Bush tries to put on the Court. We still have 45 seats in the Senate, that's enough for a filibuster. The ability to filibuster is there for a reason -- to stop a President and 51 Senators (or in this case 55) from the same party from putting an extremist on the Supreme Court. The Democrats need to make sure Bush comes up with nominees that are at lease somewhat moderate.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
Better the devil you know ..
<? include ('signature.inc'); ?>
That's your objection? "He's obviously talking about the objective!" Of course he's talking about "the objective." That's what he actually fucking said: "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." You don't have to say "it is obvious": it actually is. But then you go on to say what "the objective is." He says what the objective is: "the objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror." You don't have to offer your intepretation of what "the objective" is friend, he tells you right there what it is. Quit trying to precariously argue for the existence of the "liberal bias" the foam-mouthed AC above(probably you) reflexively screamed out.
The paragraph:
"The demands of justice are both rewarding and depleting. I take great personal satisfaction in the record which has been developed. The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved. The rule of law has been strengthened and upheld in the courts. Yet, I believe that the Department of Justice would be well served by new leadership and fresh inspiration. I believe that my energies and talents should be directed toward other challenging horizons."
Wether he actually meant what he said is another thing. Which I don't care about one way or the other. Useless politics...
After arresting scores of innocent people at the instigation of this and other war criminals and convicting the big amount of 0, zero, zilch, nada of activities related to terrorism.
In one case the damning evidence was a video of the alleged terrorists spending time in Disneyland.
And the only ones the neo-ayatollahs have any hope of "convicting" of any terrorism related activities they have safely guarded them in Guantanamo or Abu Gharib, were confessions can be conviniently extracted at the pleasure of the torturers and kangoroo courts will sentence in accordance to the public, on record wishes of the reelected Orwellian master overlord.
And the poster of the article still has the indecency to find something good to say about this individual.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I don't have mod points, but you got my respect.
It depends how you define 'terrorism'.
Outside the 19 that supposedly died on the planes in newyork (nearly half have turned up alive), how many other have been charged with the crimes relating to the largest terrorist attack on US soil.
100,000 Iraqis have died since the Iraq war.
1,000 US soldiers.
What is terrorism?
Who were the losers?
That is the BEST NEWS EVER! How come he didn't tell us about this before?
For the election we were supposed to be in fear of terror. There is no way Bush could get elected unless we were in fear.
Now that the election is over, we do not have to be in fear any more.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
You may be right about Powell, but it's still a load of crap. Rumsfeld should be the very first to go, even before Asscroft. He's a bumbling idiot, too naive and careless to be filling his seat. How many soldiers have died because he didn't listen when the military told him they need more troops than he was sending? Or because he stupidly believed that the Iraqis would welcome the US with open arms and occupying the country would be easy? And so on, and so on. He can't even open his mouth in a press conference any more without putting his foot in his mouth. It's time to retire him, the same way we retire an old nag of a horse with a lame leg.
but probably a solid 90% of the bill accomplished SORELY needed reforms.
If I were offered a drink that was 90% fruit juice and vitamins, and 10% stricnine, I would choose not to drink it.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
*One time* foreign terrorists killed 3000 people in the US. It's a terrible tragedy, but so are the 45,000 people who died in car accidents that year. And the 700,000 people who died of heart disease.
:-(
We have gone insanely overboard in how we handle terrorism. America is founded on the freedom of the people. So much so that these freedoms are written into our founding document - the Constitution. When someone tells me that we need to "protect America" from something that had a negligible statistical effect by taking away my Constitutional rights, I'll rightly tell them they're stupid, crazy, or very ignorant.
1st amendment - "right of the people peaceably to assemble" - except near the Republican National Convention in 2004.
4th amendment - "no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause" - except when the Patriot Act says it's OK.
5th amendment - "nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" - except if we can find some way to call them enemy combatants, or we declare they can't be tried publicly due to security considerations.
6th amendment - "accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial" - see above.
8th amendment - "nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted" - except in Abu Ghraib, or (maybe, how can we know?) Guantanamo.
10th amendment - "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." - this one's been shot to hell for ages
If I tried to live by the Constitution, I'd end up shot by federal agents inside of five years.
Have we given up? No. Big Media simply avoids reporting on most protests.
Yeah, I heard about this from a couple of other sites. I was surprised it wasn't mentioned in the article.
What else would you think he meant by saying he wanted to open himself up for new challenging areas?
I thought it was awful that he was the Attourney General.. but I can't hardly fathom him as an SPJ. The country is no longer going to hell in a handbasket.. oh no, its going on a silver platter.
You're nothing; like me.
It's the same thing as with "intelligent design." This administration will say -anything-, even the most blatant lie (like Ashcroft's victory lap quoted above), and use that as a position to -start- the "debate". Suddenly the "truth" has quotations around it and the lie get's equal play.
It's not even a strawman, it's literally the fucking Chewbacca defense.
That the press and most (maybe) of the electorate falls for this is the main reason why so many on the left are willing to believe the election was rigged.
-dameron
And literally "liberal" means "1. not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry; 2. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded".
Now try to imagine the type of person that reads that definition and says "nope, that's not me at all", or even worse, thinks that word should be used as an insult. And you get an inkling of what's wrong with America.
The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.
Say, John, you ever catch that person(s) who were mailing ANTHRAX all over the country? You know, ANTHRAX, that EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS disease?
Anything at all?
So, they could be roaming about right now, planning their next, even bigger anthrax attack?
Right.
Stupid fucktard.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Does anybody else think a five page handwritten letter sounds a bit psychotic?
In Clinton's last year in office, the national debt actually went *down* (when adjusted for inflation) for the first time in ages... probably my lifetime or even longer. Then, during Bush's first term, it has skyrocketed. It has increased by almost 50% (*not* adjusted for inflation... but inflation isn't anywhere *near* 50% per 4 yrs.)!
Every election season, there's a call to reduce the deficit, and it always seems to fall on deaf ears. I think that most Americans have no idea what it really is, but (because they keep hearing politicians mention it so much), tacitly agree that we need to keep it down. However, I think that their level of conviction to that belief ranks right up there with trying to not consume quite so much saturated fat and salt: "Yeah, yeah... I know... I need to cut down one of these days.".
With this latest election, I think I'm finally giving up. So, this is where I agree with you. I think I'm now going to support any legislation or budget that swells the deficit even further. Up until now, I've been telling people that, if the deficit is left unchecked then, someday, the interest on the debt will be more than our total tax revenue... at which point, there will be no way to stop the meltdown. However, they all seem to look at me as though I'm talking about an asteroid hitting the earth. They've never experienced it happening, so they don't really believe that it *can* happen.
Well.... okay. If it can't happen, then I have no qualms about bringing it about as soon as possible. I'll start moving my assets to a country with a sensible fiscal policy, and then we can start doing what we can to make sure that the national debt swells into a runaway freight train as soon as possible.
And.... to be quite honest, I'm sincerely curious to see what *does* happen. Will the gov't default on all of its loans and have the dollar become worthless overseas, or will our own economy (and gov't, too) implode as well? - Joe
The compartmentalization of agencies was most certainly not for no good reason. It was to make law enforcement less effective, which was a good and important goal of our governmental design.
The thing that Mr. Ashcroft and the rest of the executive branch have forgotten is that we need to be at least as suspicious and limiting of our government as of the people from whom our government is supposedly protecting us. Instead, the executive branch has taken the absurd view that their enemies are "Evil", and thus that their own actions are--definitionally--Good.
This is a dangerous premise. History has taught us that governments very reliably stray from Good. Every single act undertaken by a government must be carefully evaluated with questions like, "Does this make us the bad guys? Is this worse than what we're trying to solve?" And even after such questions have been asked, we need to still assume that they've been answered incorrectly, and place harsh limitations on the fundamental things a government can do.
This is the origin of bans on interdepartmental cooperation, statutes of limitation, limitations on search and siezure, the specificity of of search warrants, and so on. After all, if your government were always the good guys, you wouldn't need any such protections, right?
Yeah, you mean the banner that the sailors made, which Bush had nothing to do with?
Don't you feel like a jackass after the AC posted this link with Rove regreting using the banner? Quote: "the White House staff had it made by a private vendor"
Then began the reconstruction phase of Iraq in which the military's mission is security and training. But I guess these concepts are too hard for liberal sheep to grasp.
Well, in defense of sheep, liberal or conservative, Bush seems to indicate that things are going as "planned," and if that is the case I don't think their mission has anything to do with security.
And the Nazis championed animal rights. Yet somehow they don't seem to be much remembered for that.
How about the right to know if the government has peaked at my medical records, or noticed what books I've checked out at the library? Now, I can't prove they have, but no one can prove they have not since I simply don't have the right to know. I would like that right, and I would like the right to not have to think "Anything I check out here can be used against me" while I browse for books.
If the US government wants freedom to be "on the march" shouldn't we, as an example to the nations we wish to make free, be steadfast in preserving our own rights and freedoms? While the death of 4,000 on 9/11 was of course a tragedy and measures need to be taken to make us safer, is sacrificing freedom worth it? About 40,000 people die in car accidents every year, yet we don't have a "war on cars" that I am aware of, and I'm pretty sure in every state you can drive before you are legally an adult.
Americans are still very emotional about 9/11, and will likely remain that way for years to come, just as it was with Pearl Harbor. However we can learn from history, and I tend to believe that perhaps half a century from now the PATRIOT Act will be viewed almost as negatively as the Japanese Internment after Pearl Harbor is viewed today.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Technically (which is what counts in court) he didn't lie. He asked beforehand what the phrase "sexual relations" was defined as, got the answer that it specifically meant intercourse and proceeded to tell the narrowly defined truth: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman". He omitted "She did suck my dick once and I did push a cigar up her pussy which I then proceeded to smoke with great pleasure, but y'all didn't ask about that, now did'ya?".
Then again, it's more serious if the President almost lies about if he got a blowjob or not than if he lies to invade a sovereign nation, killing 100,000 ragheads and a few thousand GI Joes in the process.
They just happened to be the ones he was stupid enough to utter under oath.
Clinton is many things, but stupid isn't one of them. He's like a combination of Nixon's slickness, JFK's libido and the fiscal sense of FDR. Bush OTOH has Nixon's malice, no libido, no fiscal sense and Quayle's brainpower.
Money for nothing, pix for free
I don't understand why everyone's celebrating Asscroft leaving.
Who the hell does everyone think Bush is going to replace him with? Michael Moore??
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
*cough*EnlightenmentPhilosophersNotPagans*cough*.
You lot took it, along with much of the rest of the founding principles, from the French, specifically Voltaire and Montesquieu. Those gentlemen were informed in turn by Paine, Hume and Locke, none of whom could be called pagans in the sense of a pre-christian heritage.
In the 17th and 18th Centuries, a secular state was a novel, radical concept, not some underlying thought from over a thousand years before (ie the time before Christianity became a state-sponsored religion). And even before that, state religions were standard practise, if only to deify the king/emperor.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's