Tuesday Was A Great Day

What a great day Tuesday was! A wonderful thing happened in our fine country. Nothing I have heard about in the last four years made me as happy as when I saw that Attorney General John Ashcroft was calling it quits!

How's that for a consolation prize for the anti-Dubbya folks? I'm not a flag-waving Bush fan, but I can handle another 4 years of him. The single biggest reason I voted against him was because of Ashcroft. People, if you don't know about this guy you should. There is no single person in this country that is scarier.

Lets look at this guy's history:

Johnny-boy grew up in Springfield, Missouri where his dad was a Pentecostal preacher. Ashcroft was raised in a VERY strict religious tradition and he started young writing and performing gospel songs. It's not surprising that as senator he proposed the "Human Life" amendment which would abolish abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. Further, it makes perfect sense that as Attorney General, he wrote inspiratational songs and forced his staff to sing them daily. It's not a surprise that his father anointed him with holy oil "in the manner of King David," when he took office.

Ashcroft learned all his "values" from Assembly of God: a ultra-conservative offshoot of Christianity that espouses such beliefs as:

- Christians should not socialize with non-Christians.
- "Sexually suggestive forms of media and entertainment" are dangerous.
- Mixed-gender dancing is a gateway to evil behavior.
- Homosexuality is an evil practice and spreads disease.
- Governments and their laws should be based on the words in the Christian bible.
- The Practice of speaking in tongues is a necessary to achieve salvation.

With an upbringing like that, who can blame the guy for being offended at the statue of Lady Liberty in the Justice Department's press room? That salicious slut surely must be trying to subvert our youth by, GASP, showing a bare nipple! I can see where this guy thinks he's working on a mandate from God Almighty. How else can he explain the fact that he became Attorney General because he lost his 2000 bid for re-election to US Senate to a DEAD MAN and was miraculously called up by Dubbya to run the Department of Justice?
The bottom line is that the guy far worse than some nut-job religious fanatic. He's extremely intelligent and absolutely dedicated to his beliefs. For the past four years he's led a brilliant attack on the porn industry. Back in the 80's the conservatives utilized obscenity charges to try and stop you fine folks from having something to jerk off to. For the most part, this failed miserably. Johnny-boy took a whole new approach and I must give him credit. He started off by going after child pornographers.
Of course, no one can argue against this action. But he utilized every conviction to paint a picture to the American public that these perverts' actions were representative of the entire porn industry. He waged and all-out Public Relations smear campaign against porn.
Not content with emptying out the wallets of lube manufacturing companies' shareholders, Johnny-boy found a new way to impose his beliefs on America: September, 11th 2001. Ashcroft played on the fears of terrorism to do more damage to individual's rights than we've ever seen in our history. It all began in November of 2001 he announced huge changes to the Justice Department. No more menial tasks like protecting the rights of US citizens, holding up federal law, or protecting consumers. "Defending our nation and defending the citizens of America against terrorist attacks is now our first and overriding priority," he said. He was in such a hurry to do this he didn't even consult with Dubbya about it. When questioned about whether or not Dubbya had signed off on this new focus for the Justice Department, he said "I don't want to say that the president and I have conferred about every aspect of this".
On October 24, 2001 the USA Patriot Act was born. Here are some new powers that Ashcroft got at the baby shower:

- The right to freely monitor the activities political and religious groups without a criminal pretext.
- New restrictions on open hearings and the public's right to receive information through the Freedom of Information Act.
- The ability to stamp down on the dangerous menace of librarians who tip off the media to federal subpoenas of borrowing records.
- Permission to monitor conversations between lawyers and suspects, on those increasingly rare occasions that suspects are allowed to have lawyers.
- The ability to detain Americans in prison indefinitely without trial or criminal charge.

And as if that's not scary enough, Johnny-boy had his crew working on the Patriot Act Jr: Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. Check out the highlights in this little gem:

- Dramatically loosening restrictions on secret government surveillance of citizens, including on phones, e-mail and bank accounts.
- Adding a "deport at will" option allowing the Justice Department to circumvent inconvenient immigration laws.
- Expanding terrorism investigations to allow the Department to revoke the rights of anyone within about six degrees of separation of an actual terrorist act.
- Criminalizing the use of encrypted e-mail.
- Increasing the list of federal death-penalty crimes.
- Allowing the government to desecrate the graves of deceased victims of terrorism without permission from families.
- Restricting the public's and local government's access to information about corporate pollution and environmental crimes.

Here is the scary part, folks. We've given up so many rights. What have we gotten in exchange? How many convictions have we seen directly related to the September 11th attacks? ZERO. The guy that sold the fake ID's to the hijackers was convicted but he plead guilty. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, also plead guilty. The so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, is representing himself. His trial has been indefinitely postponed because he called witnesses who are being held federal government (which will not let them communicate with the outside world but has NOT charged them with any crime.
It really does suck that the one politician in Washington who truly believes in what he's doing has such whacked-out beliefs. But the good news is he's calling it quits. In his resignation letter he said that "the demands of justice are both rewarding and depleting" and that the Justice Department would be well served "by new leadership and fresh inspiration." Lets just hope for someone better than Ashcroft. I doubt even Dubbya could fuck that one up. He'd be hard-pressed to find someone worse. Thankfully, now that the President doesn't have to worry about re-election maybe the Christian Coalition won't have as much sway over his personnel choices.