Howard Dean thinks we need to stop John Ashcroft. Even fellow conservatives are starting to get ansy, unsurprisingly.

October 20, 2003 - Ashcroft uses an obscure 1872 maritime law against the Greenpeace organization for boarding a ship allegedly importing mahogany into the United States.

John Ashcroft may be skirting the line of propriety and the essence of the 1997 "Guidelines on Religious Exercise and Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace" in the Justice Department by holding daily devotionals in the office for a discussion of scriptures and prayer, and limiting words and phrases that can be included in documents with his signature. Heads of departments as important as the United States Justice Department have to be very careful about the unintentional coercive pressures they may put on civil employees by being vocal or demonstrative of their own beliefs.

John Ashcroft may be violating government ethics rules governing prosecutors' comments about the accused according to D. Mark Jackson in an article in Writ, FindLaw's Legal Commentary.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Does anyone wonder why Attorney General Ashcroft would issue a regulation forbidding non-federal authorities from releasing information about immigration detainees? ACLU President Nadine Strossen and I seem to believe that there are major constitutional rights being infringed on, and stories that would come out that would be absolutely damning to both Mr. Ashcroft and to the Presidency that placed him into power. John Ashcroft has shown a remarkable distaste for civil liberties, privacy rights and anything that makes his job even remotely difficult to do. Now that presidental records are shrouded in secrecy as well, the people of the United States aren't likely to find out the truth until a new administration is elected in their place.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has done a lot since he's been in office, and most of it has been bad. His rescinding of the 25-year old FBI prohibition on spying on our own citizens is a sham. He claims it's for terrorism, but the regs don't say anything about a connection to terrorism, so the feds can now start snooping on any of us for any reason or no reason for up to a year. Put Ashcroft next to Joe McCarthy and its hard to tell who said what.

"To those who pit Americans against immigrants, citizens against non-citizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil." --John Ashcroft, December 7, 2001 at a Senate hearing

It's reported that John's newphew, Alex Ashcroft, got a leinient sentence for growing 60 marijuana plants. Salon also covered the story about him avoiding jail in an article by Daniel Forbes. Thanks to Kathleen Ellis for the link.

Thanks to Kaya Andoque for some of the information.

John hasn't always been like this, you know!

Here is a a October 1997 article in the USIA Electronic Journal entitled Keep Big Brother's Hands of the Internet by John Ashcroft.

In testimony before Senate Judiciary Committee in March 1998, John Ashcroft said, "There has been an insistence that we turn over the keys to our individual privacy to the federal government, but there has been no talk about safeguards or privacy. Apparently, innocent citizens are expected to trust the bureaucracy not to abuse them as the IRS has done by shake down audits, or the FBI by handing over hundreds of sensitive files to political operatives in the White House."

Links:

Tell John Ashcroft to Back Off
Ashcroft Nation
Warstories Profile on John Ashcroft

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