My issues with Ashcroft have nothing to do with how well or poorly he treats his staff. M y issues with Ashcroft stem from how he has dealt with and will deal with the law. He's always been a particularly political animal, whose career has been almost singlehandedly financed and sustained by the Christian Right. Throughout his career he's used legal loopholes to his own ideological ends. For instance, Ashcroft was one of four or five senators who played round robin in delaying and squashing the commissioning of federal judges, Presidential appointments, and etc... , who offended either his high moral standards or more often those of his backers and paymasters. (an experience that many Democrat Senators haven't likely forgotten, and may remind him of shortly) He made a practise of hiring paralegals to cull through the decisions made by judges to find statements that he could distort to make the judge look "soft on crime", or "anti-Christian", or some other such nonsense, and stem confirmation. Distort them he did, repeatedly.
Basically, my issue with Ashcroft is that he strikes me as the worst kind of hypocrite, namely the pious, smug, self-serving, cynical and self-righteous kind. He shouldnt be in charge of the Justice Department any more than his counterparts on the Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist extremes. As far as that goes, how would you feel if a hard-right Muslim with minimal or no hands-on Justice experience was about to take over the FBI? Pounding the Koran the way Ashcroft pounds his Bible, with a record of ruthlessly and cynically and dishonestly and cowardly pursuing and harassing "non-believers"?
The Justice Department should be headed by a cop. It's a cop's job. Preferably an experienced big-city DA,
or, What A Thought! maybe somebody from the FBI or the Justice Department. Like, you know, a cop.
Why such a complex, specific, and explicitly dangerous institution should be headed by such an ideological and political creature as John Ashcroft should be impossible to answer. Unfortunately it's all too easy.
Yrs,
David Baerwald
Not The Issue
B
Baerwald
(view)
My issues with Ashcroft have nothing to do with how well or poorly he treats his staff. M y issues with Ashcroft stem from how he has dealt with and will deal with the law. He's always been a particularly political animal, whose career has been almost singlehandedly financed and sustained by the Christian Right. Throughout his career he's used legal loopholes to his own ideological ends. For instance, Ashcroft was one of four or five senators who played round robin in delaying and squashing the commissioning of federal judges, Presidential appointments, and etc... , who offended either his high moral standards or more often those of his backers and paymasters. (an experience that many Democrat Senators haven't likely forgotten, and may remind him of shortly) He made a practise of hiring paralegals to cull through the decisions made by judges to find statements that he could distort to make the judge look "soft on crime", or "anti-Christian", or some other such nonsense, and stem confirmation. Distort them he did, repeatedly.
Basically, my issue with Ashcroft is that he strikes me as the worst kind of hypocrite, namely the pious, smug, self-serving, cynical and self-righteous kind. He shouldnt be in charge of the Justice Department any more than his counterparts on the Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist extremes. As far as that goes, how would you feel if a hard-right Muslim with minimal or no hands-on Justice experience was about to take over the FBI? Pounding the Koran the way Ashcroft pounds his Bible, with a record of ruthlessly and cynically and dishonestly and cowardly pursuing and harassing "non-believers"?
The Justice Department should be headed by a cop. It's a cop's job. Preferably an experienced big-city DA,
or, What A Thought! maybe somebody from the FBI or the Justice Department. Like, you know, a cop.
Why such a complex, specific, and explicitly dangerous institution should be headed by such an ideological and political creature as John Ashcroft should be impossible to answer. Unfortunately it's all too easy.
Yrs,
David Baerwald
Basically, my issue with Ashcroft is that he strikes me as the worst kind of hypocrite, namely the pious, smug, self-serving, cynical and self-righteous kind. He shouldnt be in charge of the Justice Department any more than his counterparts on the Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist extremes. As far as that goes, how would you feel if a hard-right Muslim with minimal or no hands-on Justice experience was about to take over the FBI? Pounding the Koran the way Ashcroft pounds his Bible, with a record of ruthlessly and cynically and dishonestly and cowardly pursuing and harassing "non-believers"?
The Justice Department should be headed by a cop. It's a cop's job. Preferably an experienced big-city DA,
or, What A Thought! maybe somebody from the FBI or the Justice Department. Like, you know, a cop.
Why such a complex, specific, and explicitly dangerous institution should be headed by such an ideological and political creature as John Ashcroft should be impossible to answer. Unfortunately it's all too easy.
Yrs,
David Baerwald
