Pubdate: Mon, 15 Jan 2001
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Section: Politics & Policy
Contact:  200 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10281
Fax: (212) 416-2658
Website: http://www.wsj.com/
Authors: David S. Cloud and Gary Fields, Staff Reporters of The Wall Street 
Journal
Note: The last paragraph of this item.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?178 (Ashcroft, John)

ASHCROFT HAS A LENGTHY RECORD OF FIGHTS FOR CONSERVATIVE CAUSES

WASHINGTON -- John Ashcroft is nothing if not persistent.

The man George W. Bush wants as his attorney general has a
law-enforcement record marked by lengthy but often futile fights in
defense of conservative causes. As Missouri's attorney general in the
1970s, he fought several such losing cases all the way to the U.S.
Supreme Court.

He unsuccessfully accused the National Organization for Women of
violating antitrust laws by boycotting states opposing the equal
rights amendment. He fought in vain to preserve a cop-killer
conviction rendered by a jury picked from a pool assembled by the
county sheriff. Three times while he was attorney general and then
governor, he tried and failed to get the high court to overturn a
school-desegregation plan.

He also argued in favor of indefinitely holding runaway juveniles
without hearings. "John Ashcroft fought me tooth and nail all the way
to the Supreme Court on every issue," says St. Louis attorney David
Howard, who represented juveniles in that case. "He was unrelenting in
his defense that whatever the state did was OK. We had to fight for
every inch we got from federal courts."

The Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday begins hearings on Mr.
Ashcroft's nomination. Among the topics will be a 1999 speech he gave
at Bob Jones University in which he attributed America's greatness to
Christian values.

Another area where he will be questioned is his view on abortion law
and whether the former senator would use the post of attorney general
to advocate the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, the landmark
abortion-rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. On NBC's Meet the
Press, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, said that if Mr.
Ashcroft answers that question in the affirmative it "would create an
enormous, enormous problem."

But much of the inquiry will focus on the former Missouri senator's
record as attorney general of that state in 1977-85 and as governor in
1985-93. "There has been a lot of hand-wringing by opponents, but the
fact remains John Ashcroft is one of the most qualified attorney
general nominees ever and has a strong record on law enforcement and
civil rights," says Bush spokesman Mindy Tucker.

Mr. Ashcroft's dogged pursuit of conservative priorities fueled his
rise in Missouri politics, winning him votes in the state's largely
suburban and rural electorate. His tenure was not without significant
successes. When he was attorney general, the state re-instituted a
death-penalty law that withstood constitutional challenges, and as
governor he oversaw seven executions. As the state's top executive, he
pushed through the Legislature a law giving police wiretap authority
in drug cases for the first time. Though he personally tried in vain
to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold abortion restrictions in
1982, as governor he signed into law restrictions that were upheld by
the high court in its landmark 1989 decision, Webster vs. Reproductive
Health Services.

Mr. Ashcroft can't be pigeonholed as a one-dimensional crusader. For
example, he emphasized pro-consumer litigation, bringing lawsuits
against businesses for false advertising, fraud and price-fixing.
Former prosecutor William Newcomb, now a state judge, says Mr.
Ashcroft hired him to invigorate white-collar crime prosecutions,
which led to the first felony convictions for securities fraud in the
state's history.

"He delegated the job to me," says Mr. Newcomb, adding that Mr.
Ashcroft imposed no ideological agenda on him. "He wanted to know what
I was doing but he never told me you need to do this kind of case." In
one of his biggest cases, Mr. Newcomb prosecuted International Diamond
Corp., a California company, for illegally marketing diamonds as
securities. Mr. Ashcroft recused himself in that case because his
brother, James Ashcroft, was an International Diamond broker at the
time. "Do what you have to do. I'm not involved in this anymore," Mr.
Newcomb recalls him saying. Several of the company's executives were
indicted, but brokers weren't targeted.

Mr. Ashcroft took a more hands-on role in fighting school
desegregation orders in federal court. A 1983 settlement of a federal
lawsuit called for busing black St. Louis city students to largely
white schools in the surrounding counties. Mr. Ashcroft's office
played a behind-the-scenes role in working out the controversial plan,
says Mark Bremer, a St. Louis attorney then representing county school
boards. But once the settlement was reached, the state opted not to
sign it, enabling Mr. Ashcroft to challenge the agreement and fight a
similar case in Kansas City.

U.S. District Judge William Hungate, who presided over the 1983
voluntary settlement, said at the time that Mr. Ashcroft "rode [the]
bus to political prominence" by opposing the plan, which led to three
unsuccessful appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Bremer defends Mr.
Ashcroft's role. "He took steps to see that there was a settlement,
but at the same time, it was important to him to protect his ability
to appeal it," he says.

If confirmed, Mr. Ashcroft's crime-fighting priorities are likely to
mark a decisive break with Attorney General Janet Reno's. While both
see the rising tide of juvenile crime as a top priority, Ms. Reno
favors counseling programs, while Mr. Ashcroft pursued policies aimed
at prosecuting juveniles as adults.

In one of his more relentless fights as attorney general, Mr. Ashcroft
fought to hold juvenile runaways and truants in adult jails without
hearings. The practice was challenged in a class-action lawsuit. The
main plaintiffs were teenagers who had been held for nearly two
months, prompting two lower courts to rule that their constitutional
rights had been violated. The Supreme Court declined to hear the
state's appeal.

In his last years as governor, Mr. Ashcroft proposed laws cracking
down on casual drug users by seizing their driving licenses. He used
the sort of highly charged rhetoric that he became known for in his
previous jobs: "The blood of innocent babies maimed by their mother's
use of crack, the blood of victims ordered killed by drug kingpins, is
on the hands of every drug user in Missouri," he said at the time.
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