Pubdate: Thu, 18 Jan 2001
Source: Arianna Online
Copyright: 2001 Christabella, Inc.
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Forum: http://www.ariannaonline.com/discus/
Website: http://ariannaonline.com/
Author: Arianna Huffington
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Bookmarks: MAP's link to Arianna Huffington columns:
http://www.mapinc.org/author/Huffington__Arianna
http://www.mapinc.org/find?178 (Ashcroft, John)
http://www.mapinc.org/af.htm (Asset Forfeiture)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues)

ASHCROFT, KENNEDY, RENO AND RACIAL JUSTICE

The best news about the Ashcroft confirmation hearing is that, at least, we 
are not talking about his nanny. It's high time we stopped assuming that 
the only legitimate way to challenge a nominee is through the unearthing of 
private scandals -- drink, drugs, sordid sex and the occasional 
undocumented Mary Poppins. Instead of indulging in the politics of personal 
destruction, let's by all means engage in the politics of personal 
convictions and drop the pretense that the Senate's "advise and consent" 
does not extend to a nominee's beliefs.

It is much more edifying -- and healthier for our democracy -- to be 
debating Ashcroft's political philosophy and record than to hear the 
reasons why he sings but doesn't dance.

I worked with John Ashcroft in the mid-1990s when he was on the board of 
The Center for Effective Compassion, which I had co-founded to help develop 
community solutions to fighting poverty. At the time, he was a leader in 
the Renewal Alliance, a caucus of 30 Republican senators and congressmen 
committed to addressing neglected social problems, and the architect of the 
charitable choice provision in the welfare reform bill. Not bad. Nothing in 
our interactions prepared me for his acceptance of an honorary degree from 
Bob Jones University in 1999 or his defense of the Confederacy in Southern 
Partisan magazine in 1998. But Ashcroft made those decisions, and such 
decisions matter. Discussing them is not a "personal attack."

My surprise was compounded by the memory of a conversation I wrote about 
during the 1996 presidential campaign in which Ashcroft criticized Bob Dole 
for turning down an invitation to speak in front of the NAACP, and stressed 
how important it was for Republicans to reach out to African Americans.

Since I'm convinced that no policies under the purview of the Justice 
Department will have a deeper impact on African Americans than how we 
conduct the war on drugs, what most troubles me about Ashcroft's nomination 
is his medieval perspective on our disastrous drug policies and his willful 
blindness to their consequences. After all, among his official duties as 
the country's chief law enforcement officer would be overseeing the Drug 
Enforcement Agency.

Yet here is a sampler of his drug war record: champions mandatory minimums, 
even co-sponsoring bills that expand them; opposes ending the crack and 
powder cocaine differential; favors interdiction over treatment, going as 
far as voting against a treatment-funding bill co-sponsored by Strom 
Thurmond and Orrin Hatch -- hardly a cabal of bleeding-heart liberals.

Even a Ford Administration retread like Donald Rumsfeld told Congress at 
his confirmation hearing that illegal drug use is "overwhelmingly a demand 
problem" and that our current focus on interdiction is misguided.

More troubling still is the fact that, as governor of Missouri, Ashcroft 
allowed his state police to keep the proceeds from forfeited drug assets 
that were supposed to go to public schools. Even after a 1990 Missouri 
Supreme Court decision found their actions to be in violation of the state 
Constitution, the police continued to keep money earmarked for education by 
turning its forfeiture cases over to federal law enforcement, which would 
seize the funds and then generously kick back a share of the booty. In 
1998, the U.S. Court of Appeals found that the Missouri Highway Patrol and 
the Drug Enforcement Agency had "successfully conspired to violate the 
Missouri Constitution."

"President-elect Bush," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said during his 
questioning, "has asked us to look in Senator Ashcroft's heart. ... But 
actions speak louder than words." That, of course, is completely true. But 
one of the greatest ironies of the controversy surrounding Ashcroft is that 
on the watch of the current attorney general, the number of 
African-American men in state prisons has doubled, and we have been 
incarcerating black men at eight times the rate of white men. I'm only 
looking at Janet Reno's actions, not her heart -- but if her record were 
Attorney General Ashcroft's, does anyone doubt that it would be presented 
as proof positive of his racism?

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that a black male born today has a 
one in four chance of serving time in state or federal prison. It is fair 
to ask Senator Ashcroft what he would do to reverse the trend in the 
racially discriminatory sentencing that has escalated in the last decade. 
But it is equally fair to ask the current attorney general whether 
Ashcroft's friends at Southern Partisan could have come up with a more 
destructive policy for African Americans than her own department?

Race, we have been told, will be the determining issue in the Ashcroft 
nomination battle. The problem is that if we judge by results rather than 
intentions -- as Sen. Kennedy asked us to do -- our criminal justice system 
is unequivocally racist.

I know that it's not the attorney general's job to change unjust laws. But 
given how many of our drug laws are unjust, shouldn't we be looking for 
someone to head the Justice Department who, at the minimum, is cognizant of 
that fact? And who will, therefore, allocate the department's limited 
resources accordingly? That would rule out John Ashcroft -- but it would 
also rule out Janet Reno.

If only Zoe Baird had paid her nanny on the books.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake