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Bush Attorney General Pick Under Fire
WASHINGTON (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Republicans rallied to the defense of John Ashcroft Sunday as Democrats charged that George W. Bush's choice for attorney general was too much of an extremist to uphold the law.
Many Democrats fear that Ashcroft, a deeply religious southerner who abhors abortion and opposes gun control and affirmative action, is uniquely unsuitable to lead the Justice Department in upholding pro-choice laws and legislation enshrining civil rights.
Some critics of President-elect Bush's choice have openly referred to Ashcroft as a racial bigot after digging through his past as a state official in Missouri, where he successfully blocked the promotion of black Missouri Supreme Court Justice Ronnie White to the federal bench.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the Senate must confirm cabinet nominations, and former senator Ashcroft, 58, faces a grilling this week from his former colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Charles Schumer, a Democratic senator from New York, said Ashcroft would face "detailed questions" at the hearing.
Until his defeat as senator in the November elections, Ashcroft was among the one or two most "extreme" members of the 100-seat body, Schumer said in an interview with CBS television.
"When he has such strong ideological beliefs, you wonder whether the law will be enforced," he said.
Ashcroft is not the only Bush nominee in trouble. On Tuesday, Linda Chavez, another Bush pick, was forced to withdraw her nomination as secretary of labor after admitting she had harbored an illegal immigrant almost a decade ago.
Democrats and a coalition of environmentalists and conservationists are also seeking to defeat the nomination of conservative Republican Gale Norton as interior secretary.
The most ideological battle lines have been drawn around Ashcroft, however. Though Republicans admit he is right of center, they insist that as a former state attorney general in Missouri and a man of vast experience in public office, he can be counted on to uphold the law.
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the husband of the new labor secretary-designate, said he expected Ashcroft to be confirmed with the support of all Senate Republicans and some Democrats who come from states that voted for Bush in the November 7th election.
"He's a person of great integrity. His views are more conservative than the majority of the people in the Senate," he admitted to Fox television, "but Al Gore didn't win the election. I mean, what did they expect to be appointed, a liberal?"
"I think John Ashcroft is very, very sensitive to what the law is. He will execute the laws, administer the laws that are on the books, not his personal opinion," McConnell said. "There's nobody in the Senate who believes that John Ashcroft is not going to enforce the law."
The president-elect has also rejected suggestions that Ashcroft would not fully enforce all laws.
"He will enforce the civil rights laws," Bush insisted in a New York Times interview published Sunday. "I have confidence in his ability to do the job."
But Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the post of attorney general was too important to go to a "divisive" figure.
He told NBC television that Bush, who fancies himself a uniter and not a divider, had "picked a person who has taken very confrontational" and "very divisive" positions.
Barbara Boxer, a Democratic senator from California, went further, terming Ashcroft's record on civil rights "horrific."
The Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA), a consortium of U.S. policy researchers that espouses perspectives not usually covered by mainstream U.S. media, expressed concern today about an unexamined aspect of Ashcroft's record: his successful efforts to block legislation designed to equalize access to voter registration in the St. Louis area.
The IPA, in a press release, stated that as governor, Ashcroft twice vetoed measures passed overwhelmingly by the Missouri legislature that sought to make it possible for volunteer deputy registrars from nonpartisan organizations to engage in voter registration in the city of St. Louis, which was about 50% black.
The IPA quoted John Hickey, executive director of the Missouri Citizen Education Fund, "Mr. Ashcroft's vetoes show a disturbing commitment to maintaining separate and unequal access to voter registration for African-Americans."
As governor, election commissioners in St. Louis City and St. Louis County established different policies for appointing volunteer deputy registrars. In the county - mainly white and Republican at the time - commissioners would freely deputize registrars from groups like the League of Women Voters. But in the city, which had a much higher black population, similar registrars were not deputized.
"As a result, it was more difficult to get registered to vote in the City of St. Louis than in St. Louis County," Hickey recalled today. "Citizens wishing to register had to travel to fixed sites, such as the Election Board headquarters downtown, which in many cases were only open during daytime hours."
In early 1989, shortly before Ashcroft's second veto of the legislation, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on the disparity of voter registration rates - 81% in the county compared to 73% in the city.
"Especially in view of the events in Florida last November, it's crucial to scrutinize Ashcroft's vetoes of bills designed to equalize access to voter registration. As governor of Missouri, he went out of his way to maintain a status quo of inequities in voting rights. Americans have grave reasons to wonder what Ashcroft would go out of his way to do - and not do - as attorney general of the United States."
According to a Newsweek poll available on newsstands January 15th, the U.S. public, by a narrow 41%-37% margin, said the Senate should reject Ashcroft because his record on abortion, drugs and gun control is too right leaning to be effective.
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