FEELING ASHCROFT'S PAIN

All right, somebody's gotta just come right out and say it.

I'm worried about U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

First of all, let me state unequivocally that I think all of the Evil Ones
who played a part in the perpetration of the dastardly Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks must be tracked down to the ends of the Earth and brought to
justice in some way - preferably one that ends up requiring an autopsy
being performed somewhere.

That doesn't mean I can't wonder about our country's top law enforcement
officer.

I admit that I was one of the folks who was suggesting back in January 2001
that some of this guy's more conservative religious views placed him just a
tad too far outside the mainstream thought of most Americans to merit his
nomination by an incoming president who was promising to unite a polarized
country, which was still bitterly divided by the agony that was the 2000
election.

But this is a diverse country, after all - and as his defenders steadfastly
maintained, just because a person may subscribe to a few ideas that might
be perceived by some as extreme, that shouldn't automatically disqualify
him or her from public service.

Even if you have to pretend that Bill Clinton was never president, you have
to admit that this point is most assuredly true.

So it didn't help any when soon after his appointment, Ashcroft seemed to
confirm every liberal's worst fears with the morning prayer sessions he was
holding at the office. But starting the day off with some voluntary prayer
in the work place seems positively mainstream after recent revelations from
Justice Department employees that they have been encouraged to participate
in a morning singing of some dorky song the attorney general wrote.

And just as the alarms raised over those morning prayer sessions had faded
away, lingering consternation over the attorney general soon turned to
near-hysteria in some quarters during the post-Sept. 11 period, when
Ashcroft seemingly set aside his conservative's love of individual
liberties as he sought to sidestep the Bill of Rights at every turn in his
overzealous efforts to combat domestic terrorist threats, both real and
perceived.

But now, it seems the attorney general really is losing his cool - although
quite possibly with good reason.

Ashcroft reportedly was infuriated last week when it came to light that the
Immigration and Naturalization Service recently sent approved student visas
to a Florida flight school for two of the terrorists from the airliners
that were crashed into the World Trade Center.

Now this may sound like it has more than just a glimmer of sour-grapes
Monday-morning quarterbacking, but it seems to me that the AG may be
spreading himself a little too thin. He has devoted a lot of time to
covering up breasts on statues, fighting popularly enacted
physician-assisted suicide laws in Oregon and worrying about some
terminally ill people smoking marijuana in California. Instead, perhaps he
and his staff might have tried to pay just a little bit more attention to
what has been happening at the INS. Isn't there supposed to be a war going on?

And wasn't there supposed to have been some immediate in-depth review of
that agency in the aftermath of 9/11 anyway? Weren't we being assured back
then that every even remotely Arabic-sounding name in their files was
getting flagged and tracked down somehow?

I wonder how Khalid Qassm feels about all of this? A Palestinian immigrant
who owns a Dairy Queen in Rocky Mount, N.C., Qassm's life became ensnared
in the clutches of the federal government pretty quickly once it was
noticed that he had taken some flight lessons at an area airport in August.
So while the INS was dutifully making sure that this taxpaying businessman
was reporting to their Charlotte office every second Tuesday of the month
because he was living here on an expired visa, somewhere in a black-hole
corner of that agency those Florida student visas apparently were being
unquestionably rubber-stamped for approval.

I guess I'd be mad too, if I were John Ashcroft.