FORGET RACE -- ASHCROFT'S DRUG POSITION IS TERRIFYING

WE'RE ONLY 21 DAYS into the year 2001, and already Americans have
gotten off to a robust start in our favorite game: the Knee-Jerk Follies.

One John Ashcroft, opponent of abortion, affirmative action and
gratuitous gun-banning, among other things, has been nominated by
President George W. Bush to the influential post of U.S. attorney general.

Liberals reacted in knee-jerk fashion, swearing that this
anti-abortion, anti-affirmative action gun nut will be attorney
general over their dead bodies. Liberal, black, civil rights leaders
got in on the act.

Ashcroft accepted an honorary degree from Bob Jones University, a
college which at the time had a ban on interracial dating and which
regularly lambasted Catholics.

He also did an interview with a magazine called Southern Partisan, in
which he called Confederate leaders "patriots." Liberal black
leadership accused Ashcroft of lacking the fawning sensitivity on
racial matters some of us colored folks have come to feel is our due.

Conservatives were equally knee-jerkish. They didn't exactly compare
Ashcroft's elevation to attorney general with the second coming of
Christ, but the suspicion is that, deep down, they had a hankering
to.

They countered liberal objections by claiming that Ashcroft would
enforce the law as is; that he's well-qualified; that the nominee's
torpedoing of the confirmation of Missouri Judge Ron White, an
African-American, to the federal bench was not racially motivated but
highly principled, and that Ashcroft is not a racist.

The Senate Judiciary Committee went over all these charges. But
neither Republicans nor Democrats, the liberal media or the
conservative media paid much attention to the press releases of an
organization that is nonpartisan and has two board chairmen, one
Democrat and one Republican.

The group is called Common Sense for Drug Policy. Its Legislative
Group issued several statements in the past week that paint a
different picture of Ashcroft than the one presented by Democrats or
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

That no one brought these up proves that both Democrats and Republicans on
the committee and in the Senate know the fix is in for Ashcroft to be
confirmed and that both parties were engaged in a dog-and-pony show to
hoodwink American conservatives and liberals alike. Here, according to the
Common Sense for Drug Policy Legislative Group, are the facts on Ashcroft:

1) He favors cutting funds for drug treatment and prevention and
putting them into yet more law enforcement efforts. In other words,
Ashcroft favors the "lock 'em up" approach to the drug war - an
approach whose adherents figure that if we simply jail enough
inner-city, street-level, black drug dealers, we'll win the war on
drugs.

Democrats couldn't nail Ashcroft on this, of course, since their
attorney general of the past eight years, Janet Reno, pursues
precisely the same policy. Had they brought it up, Republicans might
well have countered that Democrats couldn't honestly deny Ashcroft
confirmation because the country now has an attorney general who is
Ashcroft in a skirt.

Kevin Zeese, executive director of Common Sense's Legislative Group,
said it's important that legislators scrutinize Ashcroft more closely
on drug policy.

"The attorney general is really the most powerful person when it comes
to drug policy. He generally prosecutes all the cases. The Drug
Enforcement Administration is under him."

2) When he was U.S. senator from Missouri, Ashcroft sponsored Senate
Bill 486, the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act. The Legislative
Group claims Ashcroft's proposal "would have empowered federal, state
and local law enforcement agencies to enter your house, your office,
your computer or your car without a warrant and without any obligation
to inform you that a search or seizure had been conducted."

Had the law passed, Zeese said, "it would have been
counter-revolutionary to what Jefferson and Madison meant for Fourth
Amendment rights." Regrettable, but not surprising since the "war on
drugs" is turning more into a war on privacy and civil liberties every
day. Most conservatives are too rigid to admit that, but the four or
five conservatives remaining in the country who still value privacy
and individual liberty had better give Ashcroft a second look.

3) As governor of Missouri, Ashcroft flagrantly violated the state
constitution by refusing to pass money from forfeited drug assets on
to public schools. Instead, he let his state police keep the dollars,
even after the Missouri Supreme Court ruled it was a violation of that
state's constitution. That was in 1990. In 1998, the U.S. Court of
Appeals ruled that - because Missouri state police passed on drug
asset dollars to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which would then
return some of the money to state police - the cops and the DEA had
"successfully conspired to violate the Missouri Constitution."

That's the Ashcroft whose supporters claim he will "enforce the law as
it is." It seems like Ashcroft, who used the word "integrity" no fewer
than three times when he spoke publicly after Bush announced his
nomination for attorney general, may have all the integrity of a true
Missourian.

Of the Frank and Jesse James mold.