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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.'"
'The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.'
That is the BEST NEWS EVER! How come he didn't tell us about this before?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Tomorrow Cheney!
oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
does that mean i can take off my tinfoil hat?
I thought that it was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein that did that....
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I'm going to commit crimes just to spite him.
./revolution
'The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.'
Yey we won! Now we can pull out of Iraq. No more airport security lines. I just hope W. can read script.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."
Phew! Finally. Guess we don't need a DoJ anymore.
At what cost?
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?
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
For the Supreme Court...
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Set them free. Freedom is a good thing, right? :-)
I hear there's a former Iraqi Information Minister who's still looking for a job.
I for one can't wait for his music career to jump off!a shcroft.si ngs.wbtv.med.html
"LET THE EAGLE SOAR, LIKE SHE'S NEVER SOARN BEFORE!"
http://www.cnn.com/video/us/2002/02/25/
Do you see how my mind works? It's like a laser!
He resigned because of health problems and exhaustion. Apparently he has been having various medical difficulties over the past year or so. I don't think this one was Bush's decision.
'The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.'
Am I correct in assuming that his resignation is what is bringing this achievement to pass?
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.....
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
And Bush had to have someone read it to him.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
the serious 2- I recall a quote attributed to the then director of the patent office, requesting the patent office be closed, as all concieveable inventions had been made.. both the quote and the historical snip I give seem to have a spooky similarity
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.
Does that mean the Patriot Act can be repealed now?
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.
I knew I should have hurried up with my idea for a four horsemen of the apocolypse t-shirt, now one of the horsemen has resigned....
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
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.
1) Firefox 1.0 Released
2) Halo 2 Released
3) John Ashcroft Resigns
4).... Profit!!!
What a day it's been!
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
Before 9/11, Ashcroft's top priority was targetting pornography. Since 9/11, he has been embarassingly ineffective in capturing terrorists.
Ashcroft ensured our safety by covering the breasts of statues in the justice department.
His more radically conservative replacement will complete this initiative, furthering American safety, by requiring burkas for all female statues.
...That I get to see lady Justice's boobie again?
That may be worth a trip to D.C. for that alone!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Whoa ... Stalin was an authoritarian communist. Probably the complete opposite of what is considered "conservative".
Take a look at http://www.politicalcompass.org
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).
"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.'"
I hope he attached an audio book version to the letter.
Something intruiging...
No, Ashcroft is moving to the bereau of weights and measures to serve as the standard of "Absolute Conservative". As such, it is impossible to appoint a more conservative replacement.
Doubtless, Bush will attempt to redefine the "Absolute Conservative" standard when selecting Ashcroft's replacement, but experts agree that he's likely to appoint a "Facist Extremist" by mistake.
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
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.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
Halle-FUCKING-lujah!!
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 ..
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Want a Democratic majority in this country? Make all Republicans listen to Mike Savage for a solid 4 hours. 90% of Republicans would think "THIS GUY is on my side?" and switch sides.
(No I'm not kidding. How many Republicans really agree with those talk-radio whack-jobs?)
Of course, I could also make 90% of Democrats become Republicans by making them listen to Air America for a day. You think the ring-wing guys are paraniod tin-foil hatters? Listen to Air America for a while.
That's the beautiful thing about American politics: I can choose either major party and be guaranteed to be in horrible company.
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
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.
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)?
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
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?
*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.
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.
Does anybody else think a five page handwritten letter sounds a bit psychotic?
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?
I'm not even going to bother trying to understand that...
Ok... I concede defeat. Major combat operations have ended on Slashdot... (crosses fingers)
I was just passing along the dinnertime conversation - apparently no one in my family has done their research.
~stephen
"well, he's just now resigning...."
Clearly due to the fact that his stint as Attorney General was interfering with his duties as Sith Lord.
Let's see now:
/. submission that he said that he heard over dinner from his friend that HE heard...
On the one hand, an AP report by someone who did the research, tracked the documentation, talked to the people most directly involved,
VERSUS
A
WHO DO I BELIEVE? PLEASE, GOD HELP ME, WHO DO I BELIEVE?
Yeah, he can be a real thread Nazi.
Oops, here come the Godwin Nazis to shutt me up.
Oops. Here come the Spelling Nazis to correct me error above.
Oops. Here come the Grammar Nazis to correct the error following the last error.
Oops. Here come the joke Nazis to say i should have stopped after the first line.
Oops. Here come the /. Nazis to say this would be much funnier if it had a 1)? 2)? 3)Profit! in it somewhere.
Oops. Here... I give up. Call me France. I surrender.
Must be reassuring to the USMC presently in Fallujah that what they're doing isn't a major combat operation.
Because it looks like one to me.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.