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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.'"
In all honesty I can only say good riddance.
It's almost unbelievable that the USA would allow him to work on bills such as the Patriot act.
What I don't understand is why are you guys not protesting?
Have you given up?
-={ Security does not exist - give up }=-
Is it possible that Bush will appoint a more conservative replacement for Ashcroft? That's been the danger, especially since up to four Supreme Court positions may open up this term. How would a more conservative Attorney General affect the US?
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Thank God. I wish Ashcroft could read this.
I am a Christain and a Conservative and I am glad to see him gone. His record on states rights vs federal law proves that the current administration cares nothing about the will of the people and only about the power of Federal law. I dont want the state coming in and telling me what I can and can't put in to my body or who I can have sex with. I could just see this guy dragging homosexuals in if the amendment had passed. I dont want the state to come in to my marrage or a gay marrage anymore than I want the state to come in to my relationship with God.
This guy got his rocks off dragging people in to court over matters that should never have been law in the first place.
See you around John.....
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You are most certainly wrong. I'm not even sure if Palmer was the worst one. With all due (dis)respect to Mr Ashcroft, nothing even remotely like Palmer Raids happened during his tenure. Palmer was the key factor behind the 1917 and 1918 "Espionage Act" and "Sedition Act", comparing to which Patriot Act is a teddy bear. According to this law, an elected member of Congress was refused a seat because of his pacifist views - and sentenced to 20 years of prison just because he didn't believe that America should join the slaughter of World War I (more on Victor Berger you can find here. The Palmer Raids themselves rendered the question of American "constitutional rights" simply irrelevant - it appeared there were none of them. To quote Wikipedia:
Starting on November 7, 1919, Palmer's men smashed union offices and the headquarters of Communist and Socialist organizations without warrants, concentrating on foreigners. They arrested over 10,000 people (...) In January, 1920, another 6,000 were arrested, mostly members of the anarcho-syndicalist union Industrial Workers of the World. During one of the raids, more than 4,000 Communists were rounded up in a single night. All foreign aliens caught were deported.
The public reaction to these raids was favorable, stirring up a storm of anti-communist sentiment. In a murder eerily similar to the lynching of Germans during World War I, a group of young men in Centralia, Washington hanged a radical from a railway bridge. The coroner's report stated that the communist "jumped off with a rope around his neck and then shot himself full of holes." For most of 1919, the public seemed to side with Palmer.
I don't want to defend Bush & Ashcroft, but it's simply naive to see them as "the worst that happened". No, it's not the worst in American history. When you look on the whole American history it turns out that only the post-WWII period really resembles contemporary understanding of constitutional democracy (and even then there were authoritarian hiccups of McCarthyism or Watergate).
The entire text of the letter is here.
Taken out of context, it loses very little. The man claims we've beaten both crime and terrorism.
Have we?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Tomorrow it's almost certainly Colin Powell. There is general agreement that he will leave, having been forced into an outsider's viewpoint by the ranks of the neoconservative faction of the Bush administration, i.e. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz to name just a few.
While I am absolutely elated that Ashcroft has resigned, I have no doubt that we will most certainly see four more years of the same foreign policy that has dogged the US since Bush's first inauguration. That, combined with the fact that Ashcroft has already done significant domestic damage viz. the PATRIOT act paints a rather bleak picture for the US in the coming years - even if the inside players are different.
The stage has already been set.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
What IRS stats do you refer to - Bahrain's? The middle class in America has been being soaked into the lower class. Don't believe me? Is the US Census Bureau good enough for you? Here's an article:
. ap /
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/08/26/census.poverty
"WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3 million last year, while the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 1.4 million, the Census Bureau reported Thursday."
It was the third straight annual increase in a row under Bush. Just like during Reagan and Bush Sr., the wealthy have been doing very well, and the poor very poorly. And these numbers are actually worse than they sound, because many other expenses have been going up at the same time, largely due to administration policies (college tuitions due to state aid cuts, gas prices due to a tight reserve policy and the weak dollar policy (and that whole "invasion" thing), etc)
A stable Iraq? What, you mean like there was BEFORE we made it a terrorist haven and gave the middle east a rallying cry?
What if we had left Germany and France after World War II? You mean, we shouldn't leave countries that aren't resisting our occupation of them? Good idea! Now what are your ideas for countries that *are* resisting our occupation of them?
That's it, Mr. Giraffe, get all the marmalade.
Wait, are you going to pretend that he *hasn't* been one of the most "activist" attorney generals in recent history? From trying to overturn Oregon's ballot-initiative-created assisted suicide law, to doing the same sort of thing with California's medical marijuana law, to dredging up an obscure 1872 law to bring a case against a nonviolent greenpeace protest 15 months after the fact, to coming up with the "secret detention/secret trials" nonsense, to pretending to be the Supreme Court in declaring that the justice department has no authority over most cases of gun control regulation due to the second amendment, to *drafting*, using USDOJ resources the USA-PATRIOT Act, and then using government funds to go on a *cross-country tour* to promote it?
He's not just a postmodern bureaucrat. He's a bloody nihilist.
That's it, Mr. Giraffe, get all the marmalade.
This is too late in the discussion, but I just saw it a little while ago and Ashcroft strikes a nerve. So here goes.
Ashcroft reminds me of Ministers of Interiors in Third World dictatorships. He is a tool for the dictator and the regime, and not there for his main job, that is protect the people.
His argument that he did achieve his objectives in protecting America from crime and terror is much like the guy who sprayed pepper on his front lawn, to ward off elephants. When his neighbor told him there are no elephants here, he says : "See! It works!"
Not a single case in the past 3 years was prosecuted successfully as a terrorism case, with conviction. All of the high profile arrests where Aschroft made press conferences with huge pomp, touting them as major victories in the war on terrorism, are just for show. For example, the Lakawanna Six (Buffalo, NY) Yemeni-Americans all pleaded to lesser charges and were convicted. The case of the African American bunch in Oregon is similar. The same goes for the Holy Land Foundation in Texas, and other Muslim charity cases. Most cases that Ashcroft said to be terrorism end up getting convictions for immigration irregularities or ID fraud (SSN, Driver License, Food Stamps, ...etc.). No terrorism at all, except the constant drumming up of fear in the masses, and no one remembers what happened to the poor souls who got caught and made examples of.
Of course, the Patriot Act, Secret Evidence, and the eroding civil liberties that goes with it, is exactly what is wrong, since terrorists have achieved an objective with these things.
There are other incidents that show his short comings as well, such as making a big deal of a statue with the bare breast, his fundamentalist view, him attacking Islam while in office, and more.
Someone should really make up a web site about Ashcroft Watch or something, lest people forget all this.
Well, his letter of resignation says "I believe that my energies and talents should be directed toward other challenging horizons." What does that mean? Is a Supreme Court Justice position waiting for him (despite the poster above who said that it has to be someone with judge qualifications)?
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Remember the Clipper chip? Ashcroft sided with the ACLU in opposing it. Even more ironically, Kerry supported it.
-- Will quantum computers run imaginary-time operating systems?
He certainly doesn't sound any better than Ashcroft.