Let's Get Rid of John Ashcroft

The Center for American Progress has posted A Declaration Calling for the Resignation or Removal of John Ashcroft. I would encourage everyone to read over this declaration and, if they see fit (I did), to sign the petition that goes along with it. John Ashcroft is, as Paul Krugman of The New York Times put it in at least two of his columns, the worst Attorney General in U.S. history. His affronts to our democracy are legion, and his performance as our country's top law enforcement officer are abysmal.

There are currently questions swirling around the fact that although he will blast the trumpets whenever a person of color or Muslim is arrested on the flimsiest of charges, he has made not one public peep about the arrest in December 2003 and subsequent guilty plea of William Krar, a white supremacist who was caught with automatic weapons, pipe bombs, a stash of cyanide gas large enough to kill everyone in a 30,000 square foot building, and false UN credentials and Defense Intelligence Agency IDs. This man would have been able to carry out the most devastating attack on U.S. soil since 9/11/2001, and our attorney general (along with the vsat majority of our country's media) has completely swept it under the rug. Might this be because Mr. Ashcroft has a history of being supportive of white supremacist groups?

Keep in mind that John Ashcroft was appointed by a president who was illegitimately placed into power by a partisan Supreme Court. Keep in mind also that the people of Missouri so reviled John Ashcroft that he lost his race for U.S. Senate to a dead man.

So let's put John Ashcroft where he'll do us the most good – as far away from government as possible.