Last Tuesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his resignation from his post and would not work for the Justice Department during President Bush’s second term in office. There is no doubt Ashcroft was one of the most polarizing figures during the first Bush administration.
A militant man who tried to personally wage the so-called war on terrorism, Ashcroft often impeded on numerous civil liberties. He lobbied passionately for the USA Patriot Act weeks after Sept. 11, which allows law enforcement agencies to intrude into the private lives of citizens.
The USA Patriot Act also encouraged people to be suspected of terrorism based simply on their race or ethnicity. The Justice Department was also allowed to subpoena medical records from Planned Parenthood, grossly invading the right to privacy. Instead of assuming that criminals and suspected terrorists are innocent before proven guilty, Ashcroft firmly believed in the opposite.
This time around, President Bush promised to be less divisive in his policies, and make choices that would please moderate Republicans and Democrats. On paper, Alberto Gonzales looks like a good choice for attorney general-he’s the son of a migrant worker who worked hard to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School.
He upheld abortion rights laws in Texas, where a minor seeking an abortion could obtain a waiver without having the state notifying her parents. He is also a supporter of affirmative action. These choices have angered a few of those on the far right, who would prefer someone like Ashcroft.
Unfortunately, those seem to be the only moderate policies that Gonzales favors. Like Ashcroft, he supports capital punishment. While Bush was governor of Texas, Gonzales was one of his legal advisors, and often wrote memos to Bush denying clemency for most people convicted.
In the case of a man named Terry Washington, who had fatally stabbed a woman, it was never even revealed during the trial that Washington was mentally retarded or had been repeatedly abused as a child. Yet in his memos to Bush, Gonzales made absolutely no mention of these facts, instead only depicting the gruesome nature of the crime. Naturally, Bush denied the man clemency and he was eventually executed. That was only the beginning of Gonzales’ irresponsible recommendations to Bush.
While advising the President, Gonzales suggested the Geneva Conventions (the United Nations-sanctioned rules involving human rights and the detainment of prisoners) didn’t apply to those suspected of terrorism in the United States. The Conventions explicitly prevent “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture,” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.”
Apparently, nobody remembers or even seems disturbed by a certain prison scandal in Abu Ghraib, in which photos were released depicting the very same torture the aforementioned principles deem inhumane and illegal under international law.
These are disturbing facts, since the Bush administration seems to like denying the rights of others and harming people simply because it is in their power to do so. Do we really need more people in this administration who act irresponsibly and deny the citizens their basic human rights? The verdict is in: Ashcroft was militant in curbing the civil liberties of citizens and in the unification of church and state. Gonzales is more covert and subtle than Ashcroft, but no less despicable.
Kate Marcus is a sophomore majoring in English. She can be reached at opinion@dailycardinal.com.
