JOHN ASHCROFT: DRUG WAR ULTRA-HAWK, CONFEDERACY NOSTALGIST AND CORPORATE SHILL

ACTIVISTS CAMPAIGN AGAINST BUSH AG APPOINTEE

by Bill Weinberg

A coalition of civil liberties and drug-policy reform groups pledges to put up a fight against the confirmation of ex-Sen. John Ashcroft (R-MO), President-elect George W. Bush's nomination for Attorney General. The Drug Reform Coordination Network (DRCNet) calls Ashcroft "one of the most hawkish drug warriors, supporting some of the most extreme drug war legislation during his tenure in the Senate.

"Capitol Hill crusader for tougher mandatory-minimum sentencing laws, Ashcroft also blocked efforts to end the disparity between crack and powder cocaine penalties, and to address racial profiling. DRCNet calls for activists to visit the new coalition's web site (http://www.StopJohnAshcroft.org) to find out how to plug into the effort against Ashcroft's confirmation as head of the nation's Justice Department.

Capitol Hill's Top Drug War Hawk

Where drug policy and Constitutional rights are concerned, John Ashcroft "has one of the worst records on Capitol Hill," according to DRCNet.

Sen. Ashcroft was a key sponsor of 1999's narrowly-defeated Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act, which would have outlawed drug-related discussions on the Internet, and allowed police to conduct secret searches--provisions which DRCNet says "violate the spirit of the First and Fourth Amendments."

Indeed, Ashcroft is a leading right-wing proponent of tinkering with the US Constitution. In his six years in the Senate, Ashcroft proposed seven Constitutional amendments-including one banning desecration of the flag (creating an unprecedented First Amendment exception), and another making it easier to push through such Constitutional changes.

DRCNet also charges Ashcroft with blocking Senate efforts to address the issue of racial profiling in police stops. "While outwardly professing support for a bill to study racial profiling, Sen. Ashcroft in reality used his chairmanship of the Subcommittee on the Constitution to bottle it up...the bill never made it to the Senate floor."

In a related issue of institutionalized Drug War racism, Sen. Ashcroft blocked legislation sponsored by several black lawmakers--and recommended by the US Sentencing Commission--to reduce crack cocaine sentences to the same level as powder cocaines. Instead, Sen. Ashcroft supported a bill to address the disparity by raising powder cocaine sentences!

Sen. Ashcroft also objected strenuously to spending money on drug treatment rather than interdiction, claiming treatment "enables" drug users and that only enforcement is effective.

But his nephew got a suspended sentence!

Meanwhile, journalist Daniel Forbes reports in the Internet magazine Salon (http://www.salon.com) that Ashcroft's own nephew got probation after a major pot bust--unusually lenient treatment for a bust of that size. "Although his arrest for growing 60 plants could have landed him in federal prison, "Forbes writes, "Alex Ashcroft was tried in state court and avoided jail--despite his uncle's crusade for tougher federal drug laws and mandatory prison sentences ."

John Ashcroft was Missouri governor when Alex Ashcroft, then 25, and his brother Adam, 19, were busted in a January 1992 police raid on their home--which turned up a basement grow-room with lighting, irrigation and security systems. A housemate, Kevin Sheely, then 24, was also arrested.

Although growing more than 50 plants usually triggers federal prosecution and two years in prison--thanks to the mandatory-minimum laws John Ashcroft fought to toughen--Alex was only prosecuted on a state charge. He received probation and 100 hours of community service in lieu of a three-year suspended sentence. Adam, who didn't live in the house, was not prosecuted.

Dan Viets, lawyer for Sheely (who was not convicted) told Salon that Alex even tested positive for drugs in his first post-probation drug test--yet still remained free. Reached for comment, Alex's father Bob Ashcroft first denied that his son had failed a urine test, then said, "Anything's possible." Alex's mom, Beverly Ashcroft, told Forbes, "I have no idea. That's such an upsetting time, it's all a little foggy." But she insisted, "I think the facts are clear that his uncle as governor certainly did not bail Alex out.

"Writes Forbes: "There's no evidence Ashcroft intervened on behalf of his nephew, but Alex Ashcroft's connection to the governor was widely known. The arrest made national newspapers, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to USA Today, as well as the local dailies.

"Mindy Tucker, a spokeswoman for the Bush transition team, told Forbes: "Given Sen. Ashcroft's reputation for zero tolerance, I'm sure if he had anything to do with it, the penalty would be much worse. He would have influenced it [the sentence] in the opposite direction." She declined further comment.

But others convicted of similar offenses in Missouri have faced much tougher punishment. Forbes cites the case of Eric Edmundson, a Pineville, MO, electrical engineer who served two years in Leavenworth after his 1993 arrest for growing 51 plants on his property.

Confederacy Nostalgia

John Ashcroft has also drawn fire for his apparent sympathy for the Confederacy in the US Civil War. The media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (http://www.fair.org) cites his contribution to the Southern Partisan, a white separatist magazine based in South Carolina.

In 1998, the following endorsement from Sen. Ashcroft appeared in the Southern Partisan: "Your magazine...helps set the record straight. You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and [Jefferson] Davis... We've all got to stand up and speak...or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."

FAIR charges that Ashcroft "was endorsing a publication that defends slavery, white separatism, apartheid and David Duke; a publication that celebrates the assassination of Abraham Lincoln..."

FAIR cites a series of quotes from Southern Partisan articles that said Southern slave-owners sought "to further the slaves' peace and happiness," called Abraham Lincoln a "consummate conniver, manipulator and a liar, "referred to "the sinister Emancipation Proclamation" as "an invitation to the slaves to rise against their masters," characterized Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth as "not only sane, but sensible," praised former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke as "a Populist spokesperson for a recapturing of the American ideal," blasted feminism as a "revolt against god," charged that the University of Georgia "promotes perversion" by sponsoring gay and lesbian programs, hailed AIDS as "a sign of God's wrath," dissed Miami as full of "cocaine-pushing trigger-happy Colombians," and proclaimed that non-whites "have no temperament for democracy."

Southern Partisan senior advisors have included Pat Buchanan and Boyd Cathey--who simultaneously served as editorial advisor to the Holocaust-revisionist Journal of Historical Review. The magazine also sells t-shirts with Lincoln's image over the words "sic semper tyrannis" ("ever thus to tyrants")-John Wilkes Booth's cry as he fled the Ford Theatre after shooting Lincoln. Timothy McVeigh was wearing this t-shirt when he was arrested for the Oklahoma City bombing.

Ashcroft isn't the only Bush appointment with a soft spot for the Confederacy. Prompted by a speech in which she likened her states' rights crusade to the cause of Virginia soldiers in the Civil War, the NAACP has joined with environmental groups opposing the confirmation of former Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton as Interior Secretary. In 1996, Norton told Denver's ultra-conservative Independence Institute, "we lost too much" in the defeat of the Confederacy. "We lost the idea that the states were to stand against the federal government gaining too much power over our lives." Norton did concede that "defending state sovereignty by defending slavery" was an example of the kind of "bad facts" that can undermine a legitimate case.

Meanwhile, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader charges that Ashcroft sold his Senate vote for campaign money to the highest-bidding corporate interest. "Ashcroft has violated his public trust to represent the citizens of his state," Nader told the press during a St. Louis campaign stop. Nader charges that Ashcroft "has already been caught publicly with his hand in the till." According to Nader, the Schering-Plough company gave Ashcroft's Victory Committee $50,000 while Ashcroft--then a key member of the Senate Judiciary Committee--pushed to secure a patent extension for its popular allergy drug Claritin--"at a cost to consumers of $7.3 billion in monopoly prices." Chuckled the Green candidate: "No wonder he's being called the Senator from Claritin."