James Comey’s startling testimony earlier this week stunned much of the political world, but for many of us on the left, there was one point that was particularly hard to digest: in this dramatic tale, John Ashcroft was (gulp) something of a hero<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Peter Baker and Susan Schmidt report<\/a> today that the revelations are leading some observers to reconsider the former Attorney General in a new light.<\/p>\n Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) praised his “fidelity to the rule of law.” The Wonkette Web site posted the headline: “Ashcroft Takes Heroic Stand.” Under a similar headline, “John Ashcroft, American Hero,” Andrew Sullivan expressed astonishment on his Atlantic magazine blog that “John Ashcroft was way too moderate for these people. John Ashcroft.”<\/p>\n Ralph G. Neas, president of the liberal group People for the American Way and one of Ashcroft’s strongest critics over the years, said the incident told more about his successor, Gonzales, who was one of the two Bush aides at the hospital that night.<\/p>\n “I did not think it was even possible to make John Ashcroft into a civil libertarian,” Neas said in an interview. “But somehow Alberto Gonzales for at least one moment managed to make John Ashcroft into a defender of the Constitution.” […]<\/p>\n “He was a voice for moderation on a wide range of issues that he never got credit for because he did it the right way, behind the scenes,” said another former official who asked not to be named. “On many, many issues the administration has gotten itself in trouble on, if they had listened to his advice, they would have been better off.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Indeed, Baker and Schmidt point to a variety of instances in which Ashcroft took on the Cheney\/Rumsfeld axis, including opposition to indefinite detentions at Guantanamo Bay and the administration’s model for military commissions.<\/p>\n All of this is true, of course, but let’s not go overboard. Ashcroft starts to look sensible and reasonable in large part because his successor is such a joke. Confronted by Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales over warrantless surveillance, Ashcroft did the right thing and defended the rule of law. But I’d probably hold off on sending him an ACLU membership application.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" James Comey’s startling testimony earlier this week stunned much of the political world, but for many of us on the left, there was one point that was particularly hard to digest: in this dramatic tale, John Ashcroft was (gulp) something of a hero. Peter Baker and Susan Schmidt report today that the revelations are leading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nThis is, after all, the same Ashcroft who relentlessly pushed some of the most dangerous provisions of the Patriot Act, endorsed torture, made poor choices<\/a>, showed bizarre priorities<\/a>, suffered crushing defeats<\/a> at the Supreme Court, issued highly dubious<\/a> terrorist threat warnings, fought with Congress<\/a> over documents to which lawmakers were legally entitled, and may have even fibbed<\/a> in his testimony to the 9\/11 Commission. And that’s not even including the “Spirit of Justice” incident<\/a>.<\/p>\n