John Ashcroft

Thank you for that sobering and incisive assessment of John Ashcroft's nomination for attorney general ("The Conscience of a Pentecostal," by Martin E. Marty, Opinion, Jan. 28). I too am an evangelical Christian committed to scriptural truths and commands. Thus I find it breathtakingly appalling that Ashcroft is so power-hungry he would willingly subscribe to enforcing laws he declares he finds totally unscriptural and abhorrent. Either this means he is intending to change or subvert those laws--or has no moral convictions whatever.

Not for the first time, the Supreme Court has refused to hold high government officials responsible for outrageous abuses of human rights. Late last month, the court rejected a lawsuit against former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft by a U.S. citizen who was unfairly imprisoned and mistreated under the pretense of securing his appearance as a witness. Abdullah Kidd, a convert to Islam who was known as Lavoni Kidd when he played football for the University of Idaho, claimed that Ashcroft had authorized a policy of using the material witness statute — designed to ensure the presence of witnesses at trial — as a way of holding suspected terrorists when there was no probable cause to do so. Kidd was detained at Dulles International Airport in 2003 as he prepared to fly to Saudi Arabia to study.

Re "Ashcroft, Under Fire, Vows to Uphold the Law," Jan. 17: George W. Bush's campaign platform of bipartisanship means little if John Ashcroft is confirmed as attorney general. It is not a question of whether he will uphold the law. It becomes a question of how far to the right can the president-elect go from his "middle of the road" campaign. Especially after the campaign debacle that left him without a true mandate. This nomination does not lend itself to bringing the two parties together.

The Supreme Court, unanimously throwing out a suit against former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft from someone arrested but never used as a material witness in a terrorism case, has now erected a broad shield protecting the government and Bush administration officials for their conduct in the war on terrorism. The justices have repeatedly rejected lawsuits from civil libertarians who contended top officials had stretched the law and violated the Constitution by ordering the arrest of Muslim men in the U.S. and abroad, most of whom were never charged with terrorism.

In the 18th century, Samuel Johnson coined his famous aphorism that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Yet if Johnson were alive today to witness the hurly-burly of modern political discourse, he might very well say "the charge of racism is the last refuge of the American left."

A top candidate to succeed U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft professed no interest in the job Thursday, as speculation mounted that Ashcroft might be the first Cabinet member to leave the Bush administration since the president's reelection. Larry D. Thompson, Ashcroft's former deputy, said he was "fully engaged and committed" to a senior executive position he took last summer with PepsiCo in Purchase, N.Y., according to a statement issued by the soft drink and snack foods company.

Elizabeth Dole, wife of 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, cracked open the door to a White House bid of her own Monday, even as Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft, a favorite of conservatives, appeared to be edging away from the race. In announcing her resignation as president of the American Red Cross, Dole indicated that she intends to explore the possibility of seeking next year's GOP presidential nomination.

Sen. John Ashcroft has an idea that seems almost quaint these days: Political leaders are also moral leaders for the nation. "Leaders are teachers," the Missouri Republican says. "What we condone, we reinforce. What we condemn, we diminish." That's a maverick concept at a time when many people, far from looking to politicians as moral exemplars, assume they are a pack of crooks, philanderers and schemers.

Sometimes, Phil Burress wonders whether his faith in John Ashcroft was misplaced. Three years ago, the anti-porn activist was looking to Ashcroft and the Justice Department to wage an aggressive crackdown on smut. Federal obscenity prosecutions had flagged during the Clinton administration. The new attorney general, with his fervent Christian credentials, looked to be the ideal warrior to take on the nation's burgeoning and multibillion-dollar pornography industry.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus vented their rage on a panoply of racially tinged issues during an hourlong meeting Wednesday evening with President Bush. The president agreed to work with the black Democrats on election reforms but he neither agreed with their criticisms of nor defended his appointment of John Ashcroft as attorney general, according to meeting participants. "The meeting was very businesslike, very civil and very relaxed," said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court was asked to help right an egregious violation of human rights that occurred in the aftermath of 9/11. The case involved a U.S. citizen who was confined for two weeks on the pretext of securing his testimony at someone else's trial. In fact, the government regarded him as a suspect but had no probable cause to hold him. A majority of the court seemed unsympathetic to Abdullah Kidd's attempt to sue former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft for the mistreatment.

The Supreme Court intervened again Monday in a lawsuit against a former George W. Bush administration official, agreeing to decide whether former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft is entirely shielded from claims that he misused the law to arrest terrorism suspects under false pretenses. Obama administration lawyers appealed on Ashcroft's behalf and asserted that it would "severely damage law enforcement" if the nation's top law enforcement official could be held liable for abusing his authority.

Then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft violated the rights of U.S. citizens in the fevered wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by ordering arrests on material witness warrants when the government lacked probable cause, a federal appeals court said in a scathing opinion Friday. In a ruling that said Ashcroft could be sued for prosecutorial abuses, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the former attorney general immunity from liability for how he used the material witness warrants in national security investigations.

The Supreme Court served notice Monday that it would set a high bar for anyone seeking to hold top government officials liable for abuse suffered by prisoners held as part of the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy spoke for a 5-4 majority in throwing out a lawsuit against former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III that claimed the two ordered the roundup of hundreds of Muslim men after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft on Thursday disavowed the legal reasoning once used to justify coercive interrogations of terrorism suspects, but defended White House officials who pressured him while he was hospitalized four years ago to approve terrorist surveillance programs. At the heart of the four-hour hearing before the House Judiciary Committee was whether U.S.

Re "Tainted justice," Opinion, June 28 Bruce J. Einhorn is incorrect in one respect. It was not John Ashcroft and Alberto R. Gonzales alone, as attorneys general, who established the hiring policy at the Department of Justice, but rather it was under the direction of their boss. Clearly, President Bush himself has tainted the department by requiring politically-based hirings in areas that have been historically apolitical. To write an opinion article that doesn't mention our president in this matter is not fully accurate or reasonable, despite such an article being otherwise correct in its condemnation.

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is the last enemy combatant imprisoned in this country. Yet four years after his arrest, government officials still cannot agree on what threat he posed. In a new allegation, former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft says Al-Marri was sent to the United States a day before the Sept. 11 attacks to plan strikes on West Coast targets, including the tallest building in Los Angeles. Ashcroft's claim -- made in a new book -- is the first time any U.S.

Five years after Muslim immigrants were abused in a federal jail here, the guards who beat them and the Washington policymakers who decided to hold them for months without charges are being called to account. Some 1,200 Middle Eastern men were arrested on suspicion of terrorism after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. No holding place was so notorious as Brooklyn's nine-story Metropolitan Detention Center.