Copyright 2001 The Washington Post
The Washington
Post
January 19, 2001, Friday, Final Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A36
LENGTH: 753 words
HEADLINE:
The Ashcroft Nomination
BODY:
John Ashcroft
testified before the Senate committee considering his nomination that he will
not seek to have Roe v. Wade reversed, and that he doesn't think the Second
Amendment forbids reasonable regulation of guns.
Abortion and gun
control were the issues Mr. Ashcroft used to entice people to vote for him. Was
he lying during the campaign, or is he lying to the Senate? Either way, it seems
to me that the administration that promised to restore integrity and dignity to
the White House is trying to foist a liar onto the American people to serve as
our chief law enforcement officer.
If you want to know who Mr. Ashcroft
will really go to bat for, all you have to do is remember the old Watergate
admonition: Follow the money. Mr. Ashcroft's real constituents are the
pharmaceutical and insurance companies as well as various other anti-consumer
health care lobbies that paid out nearly $ 1 million in contributions to Mr.
Ashcroft's reelection campaign. It was money well spent. Four times in the past
year he voted against prescription-drug benefits for Medicaid recipients; twice
he helped kill the bipartisan Patients' Bill of Rights, which would have allowed
consumers to sue managed care companies for delayed or denied care. He also
backed a phony business-sponsored Patients' Bill of Rights that would prohibit
consumers from suing their managed care providers. As Casey Stengel would say:
"You can look it up." WILLIAM C. STOSINE
Iowa City
*
The Jan. 16 Style story on Attorney General-designate
John Ashcroft distorted what he said in a Claremont Institute dinner speech on
Oct. 13, 1997. The story attributes to Mr. Ashcroft the view "that proposed
national history standards made too much of the Ku Klux Klan and nothing at all
of Lee."
In fact, Mr. Ashcroft was bemoaning the collapse of national
history standards, as described by then-chair of the National Endowment for the
Humanities, Lynne Cheney. To quote his words, "She watched as references to
Robert E. Lee, as references to the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison, as
references to Paul Revere were taken out of the history textbooks and replaced
by references -- 17 of them, as a matter of fact -- to the Ku Klux Klan." His
remarks did not emphasize Lee, any more than they emphasized aviation or
electricity.
Given the Claremont Institute's attachment to the
principles of Abraham Lincoln, had Mr. Ashcroft been the pro-slavery apologist
or Ku Klux Klan enthusiast The Post's account insinuates, he would never have
been invited to our dinner, or he would have been chased out of the room for
making such odious remarks.
THOMAS B. SILVER
President
The Claremont Institute
Claremont, Calif.
*
Richard Cohen [op-ed, Jan. 11] mistakenly asserts that Sen.
Ashcroft is being labeled a racist solely on his opposition to Judge White's
appointment to the federal bench. On the contrary, Mr. Ashcroft has earned that
label by endorsing values espoused in Southern Partisan magazine, which pays
tribute to the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Ashcroft is on record
thanking Southern Partisan for "setting the record straight" on the Civil War.
Further, he accepted an honorary degree from Bob Jones University, whose recent
racist and anti-gay policies are well known.
JON-PETER KELLY
New
York
*
The Jan. 9 front-page article "Abortion Rights
Key in Fight Over Ashcroft" quoted GOP officials as saying that Attorney
General-nominee John Ashcroft's support of "a measure last year that bars clinic
protesters from filing for bankruptcy as a protection from
lawsuits" is proof that he is not the unbending ideologue that
abortion rights groups say he is.
However, the
so-called bankruptcy reform bill, wisely killed by President
Clinton, was designed mainly to prevent ordinary individuals from receiving
bankruptcy protection from credit card companies and other financial industries.
When he was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Ashcroft was
a supporter of the bill and a recipient of the credit card lobbyists' largess.
Bankruptcy reform enjoys bipartisan support, but the most conservative
congressional Republicans have sought to cast the issue as one of morality
rather than one of creditor-debtor law. The GOP's specious citation of Mr.
Ashcroft's position on this issue in his defense should be disconcerting to the
senators whose job it is to confirm or reject his nomination, and to all
Americans.
BILL MURPHY JR.
Washington
LOAD-DATE: January 19, 2001
