One Thumb Up For Ashcroft

While I share Ebert's distaste for Attorney General Ashcroft's Jesus-freakin', and add in the familiar objections to the AG's wars on bongs, personal privacy, and so on, one recent act brings out my inner Siskel (never Roeper though, never!): Out here in the Golden State (where he has otherwise been occupied with gross violations of state's rights), Ashcroft is fighting police use of a federal database of criminal records (intended only for gun dealers to make background checks of gun buyers) to hunt lawbreakers. The stance has brought plenty of liberal law-and-order sniping about how gun ownership is the only area where Ashcroft seems interested in constitutional rights. Still, in this one case I have to say Let the Mighty Eagle Soar!

Comments

[seth sanders]

Tim, one phrase: ARM THE INSANE.

Now playing: Legitimate Gun Owners, "Guns Don't Kill People (They're Not People)"

Now reading: More Guns, Less Crime.

[Kevin Carson]

It figures. The nannies probably object more to Ashcroft's position on gun rights than they do to TIA and military tribunals.

Taking the most cynical position, Ashcroft & Bush may just figure that most gun advocates are mainstream GOP types who'll support anything the police state does so long as the President is a Republican and he wraps himself in the mantle of national security. The less pliable Right (constitutionalists, militias, dissident Freepers, etc.) can be disarmed under completely separate auspices, like classifying their organizations as "terrorist."

I recall an item in the news, before 9-11, where Ashcroft was proposing inter-jurisdictional task forces at the judicial district level, on the model of the drug task forces, to go after armed felons and other illegal possessors of firearms. Just goes to show you what a dangerous cop-out the NRA "enforce existing laws" position is.

Of course, this may just be the one area of freedom Ashcroft genuinely believes in. If so, it only goes to confirm the old bromide: "There's so much good in the worst of us..."

[geophile]

Someone really needs to go sing "Let the Eagles Soar" on American Idol.

[Anti-Ashcroftian Genius]

Yeah, what the hell is with people with religious convictions anyway? If we all don't agree god is dead the world will continue to deny the possibility of a Star Trek Channel!