The Senate confirmed the appointment of John Ashcroft, Bush's controversial choice for Attorney General, Thursday on a 58 to 42 vote. That "42" is significant, because it is two votes more than would be needed to sustain a fillibuster.

For Democrats, the battle was a test of strategy, tactics and cohesiveness with an eye toward anticipated nominations for Federal and Supreme Court Justices. For Republicans, the battle was a test of loyalty to the party and to Bush. Naturally, both sides claimed victory.

1/16/01

Right-wing conservatives stayed out of sight during the Presidential campaign, allowing Bush to represent a potential Bush Administration as a moderate bipartisan's dream-come-true. The nomination of John Ashcroft for the post of Attorney General is widely seen as their big pay-off for that silence. But if "moderate bipartisanship" was the campaign dream, the nomination of the anti-choice, anti-civil rights, conservative ideologue John Ashcroft is the nightmare reality of a Bush Administration. Like some soft-spoken Freddy Krueger in a nice suit, he seems gleefully eager to don a razor-clawed glove and slice away civil rights protections and reproductive freedoms enjoyed by women and minorities for decades.

As the Ashcroft confirmation hearings begin in the Senate, a wide ranging coalition of women's and civil rights advocacy groups are marshalling their forces to oppose his confirmation.

• A coalition of progressive advocacy groups has created a "Stop Ashcroft Now" website which links to opposition statements from 40 advocacy organizations. The coalition, announced last week, also includes a web-based email campaign on its site, as well as links to press coverage of both Ashcroft and the coalition's efforts to prevent his confirmation.

• Planned Parenthood has created ROEvBUSH, a web-based advocacy center that includes background information and links to advocacy organizations on each issue, late-breaking news, and tools for activists to receive daily updates by email, and send email to Congress and national news organizations.

• The National Organization for Women has prepared both an online petition and a web-based email campaign to prevent his confirmation.

• The American Civil Liberties Union has released an extensive report detailing his record, "Not Moderate, Not Compassionate, Not Conservative: John Ashcroft's Radical Revisionism of Basic Constitutional Values in America."

• People For the American Way released a new report highlighting John Ashcroft's Missouri record, as a follow-up to its initial report on Ashcroft's Senate record.

• NARAL has prepared an extensive fact-sheet detailing Ashcroft's anti-choice record throughout his public-service career.

Why are all these people so upset?

There's good reason: If John Ashcroft is a liberal's vision of Freddy Krueger, the Attorney General's office is his razor-clawed glove. The Attorney General the person in charge of enforcing, and to some extent, influencing, the laws of this country - laws such as the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, civil rights laws, federal hate crimes laws, and a woman's right to choose to terminate a pregnancy. But enforcement of federal laws can be highly selective, and a lack of prosecutorial will can easily make such laws virtually toothless.

Ashcroft's record indicates that there may be a distinct lack of "prosecutorial will" in the Justice Department when in comes to enforcing laws protecting civil rights for women and minorities, religious freedom for non-Christian faiths, and the protection of reproductive choice in both law and access.

But it is not only the Attorney General's role in enforcing existing law that has so many people upset; the Attorney General also has a virtually unparalleled power to shape both our future laws and the role of the judiciary in our society.

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