WHERE'S THAT STATE'S-RIGHTER ASHCROFT NOW?

When John Ashcroft was in the U.S. Senate he was always a champion of
state's rights.

Too much power is held in Washington. State government is closest to the
people.

Now that he's the attorney general, the states are wondering where he's
gone. The message is clear from his U.S. Department of Justice: We feds know
best.

The glaring example is Ashcroft's love affair with the death penalty. He
recently overruled 28 local federal prosecutors who had decided not to seek
the death penalty in 28 cases and he has used federal prosecutions to
override state laws such as the use of marijuana for medical purposes and
Washington state's right-to-die law.

The most glaring example of that occurred recently in California. Ashcroft's
prosecutors went after a man who had a state license to grow marijuana for
medicinal purposes. The federal judge in the case refused to let the jury
know that he had a state license. He was convicted and faces five years in
the federal penitentiary.

Those who keep an eye on the Justice Department are struck by the irony that
former Attorney General Janet Reno, a supposed "big government" Democrat,
yielded to state's rights more readily that the once unyielding state's
rights man Ashcroft.

Ashcroft's concentration of more power in Washington isn't confined to drug
cases and the death penalty, however.

Those who have seen a draft of his so-called "Patriot Act II" are struck by
its concentration of more power in the Justice Department, superseding many
state laws, all supposedly necessary for the war against potential
terrorists.

The current Patriot Act has been under fire from civil libertarians for its
sweeping changes to traditional American safeguards on detention and
prosecution. Patriot Act II is "breathtaking," some who have seen a draft of
it say.

The act, which will be introduced in a few weeks, could declare individuals,
not just groups, "foreign powers" subject to clandestine surveillance and
would permit surveillance against a U.S. citizen suspected of spying for a
foreign power, even if the suspicious conduct was not itself criminal.

Additionally, according to an alert from the American Society of Newspaper
Editors, the act would repeal key provisions of the venerable United States
Freedom of Information Act, allowing the government to keep secret much more
information than it already does. Names of people detained in connection
with terrorism investigations would be exempt from FOIA provisions, for
example. In other words, some folks might disappear overnight and you'd
never be able to find out where they went or why.

Indeed, these state's-righters turn into very different people when you give
them power in Washington, D.C. The question is, can we survive them?