Bush begins term on wrong foot
Appointee John Ashcroft’s extremist views may affect decisions

President George W. Bush wanted nothing more than to have a smooth transition to the White House after what could be deemed a less than smooth election.

It all started off very nicely for Bush with Linda Chavez’s sudden self-implosion and has now taken a turn for the worse with Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft.With the decision to nominate Ashcroft, Bush, who focused much of his campaign on promising to unite Congress, quickly made matters worse before he had even been sworn into office.

Although Bush describes Ashcroft as a great compromiser between party lines, most of his record indicates otherwise. Personally, I have trouble seeing a man as a unifier when he says there are two things you find in the middle of a road: “a moderate and a dead skunk. And I don’t want to be either one of those.”

Ashcroft is a deeply religious Pentecostal who has an honorary degree from the ultra-conservative Bob Jones University and openly states that America has “no king but Jesus.”

Religion is a truly wonderful thing. However, the last time I checked, our nation was founded on the idea of a separation between church and state. When the man who, besides the president, has more power over laws than anyone else sees his lawmaker as Jesus, we are looking at a new era of a blossoming unity between church and state.

I approve of his very open pro-life views, but when he also wants to outlaw abortions in cases of rape and incest, it is obvious that he allows his extremist views of religion and conservatism to affect his lawmaking decisions.

The part that worries me is that this only begins to scratch the surface of the swirling controversy surrounding Ashcroft. The focus of the Democrats is his alleged past of discrimination.

In 1977, as the attorney general of Missouri, Ashcroft adamantly opposed court-ordered desegregation in St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo. and battled a voluntary-busing scheme in 1983, despite the fact that all 22 school districts in the predominantly white suburbs easily approved the measure. He also lied about the cost of the desegregation ruling and fought the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear it.

Furthermore, he has been charged with attempting to suppress black voter turnout by repeatedly vetoing laws to promote voter registration in the heavily black and democratic city of St. Louis. Also, he has been accused of racial insensitivity when he defended Confederate leaders in an interview. Then, for an encore he openly opposed the admittedly gay ambassadorial nominee James Hormel because of his lifestyle, not his qualifications.

Sadly, all of these accusations have been placed on the back burner as the majority of the Democrats’ ammo has come from Ashcroft’s public crusade against Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie White’s bid for the federal bench when Ashcroft was a senator.

Ashcroft labeled the black judge as being “pro-criminal” based on just one dissent White made in an isolated death-penalty case. But in an ironic twist, White had voted to uphold the death penalty approximately 70 percent of the time, while four of Ashcroft’s judicial nominees overturned the death penalty more often than White.

Basically, Ashcroft was either discriminating against White because of his race or he was creating a death penalty issue for his senatorial campaign by making an example out of White. It’s pretty safe to say he was very much in the wrong, regardless of the answer.

Although any one of these incidents can be easily overlooked in isolation, it’s difficult to approve of someone who has been repeatedly accused of extremism and discrimination throughout his career.

What may be even worse than Ashcroft being appointed is that many Democrats in Congress secretly want him to be approved so they’ll have more ammo against the Bush administration for years to come.

God bless America.

Jordan Blum is a sophomore broadcast journalism major form
New Orleans.He can be reached at (j.d.blum@student.tcu.edu).

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