US Attorney General and Secretary of Commerce resign

[shamrock_uk]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/3997987.stm

[Timber Loftis]

Ashcroft cited his success in protecting the US from terrorists. And then he hit his crack pipe again.

[Grojlach]

Well, that's at least one less reason to dislike the Bush administration... Let's hope they'll pick someone less radical for the post this time around.

[Timber Loftis]

Today's NY Times:

Text of Ashcroft's Resignation Letter
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: November 9, 2004
Text of the resignation letter, dated Nov. 2 and released Tuesday, from Attorney General John Ashcroft to President Bush:

Dear Mr. President:

Nothing in my life compares to the high honor of serving America as Attorney General in your administration.

The cause of justice is indeed a serious calling. Americans have been spared the violence and savagery of terrorist attack on our soil since September 11, 2001.

During the last four years our violent crime rate has plunged to a 30-year low. Under your "Project Safe Neighborhoods" the number of gun crimes has fallen to its lowest level in modern history. Drug use among America's young people has fallen and continues to fall significantly.

Corporate integrity has been restored with the work of your Corporate Fraud Task Force. As a result United States markets have reinforced their position as the trusted allocators of the world's capital resources.

Thank you for your leadership which has made these and many other justice-related achievements possible.

The demands of justice are both rewarding and depleting. I take great personal satisfaction in the record which has been developed. The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved. The rule of law has been strengthened and upheld in the courts. Yet, I believe that the Department of Justice would be well served by new leadership and fresh inspiration. I believe that my energies and talents should be directed toward other challenging horizons.

Therefore, I humbly state my desire to resign from the office of United States Attorney General.

It would be my pleasure to structure the announcement of this resignation and the ensuing transition in conjunction with you so that your administration and the cause of justice are served optimally.

I have handwritten this letter so its confidentiality can be maintained until the appropriate arrangements mentioned above can be made.

I am grateful to you for the profound honor of serving under your clear, principled leadership.

May God continue to bless, guide, and direct you and your family as you lead America forward in freedom.

Most Sincerely,

John Ashcroft

[Timber Loftis]

November 11, 2004
Nominee for Attorney General Rides an Ideological Divide
By DAVID JOHNSTON
and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

ASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - When Alberto R. Gonzales was 12, he hawked cold sodas at Rice University football games in Houston, his hometown. The son of a migrant worker, he occasionally stole glances at the campus and the students, dreaming, as he recounted in the commencement address there in May, that he might one day be among them.

On Wednesday, President Bush said he would nominate Mr. Gonzales as attorney general, replacing John Ashcroft, whose resignation the White House announced on Tuesday.

For Mr. Gonzales, it was a remarkable moment in a journey that has taken him from a house with no hot water or phone to Rice and Harvard Law School, the White House and now one of the most visible and influential jobs in Washington.

"When I talk to people around the country, I sometimes tell them that within the Hispanic community there is a shared hope for an opportunity to succeed," Mr. Gonzales, who has been White House counsel for nearly four years, said after the president's announcement. " 'Just give me a chance to prove myself' - that is a common prayer for those in my community."

Assuming he is confirmed by the Senate - and the initial response from Democrats suggested that he would be - Mr. Gonzales will get his chance. As attorney general, he will be forced to prove and defend himself on many of the most important and ideologically charged issues facing the nation.

He is viewed with some suspicion by Democrats, who promised on Wednesday to question him aggressively about his role in setting administration policy on detaining and questioning people captured in the effort to combat terrorism. And he is seen as unreliable by many conservatives, who said he has not been sufficiently hard line on the issues of most concern to them, including abortion and affirmative action.

Mr. Gonzales has a powerful patron in Mr. Bush. He served Mr. Bush as general counsel and then secretary of state when Mr. Bush was governor of Texas. In 1999, Mr. Bush named Mr. Gonzales to a seat on the Texas Supreme Court - an appointment that came as a mild surprise in the state's legal circles because Mr. Gonzales had no judicial experience.

He also has a political wind at his back. The fast-growing Hispanic population has become crucial to both parties, and Mr. Bush's success in winning a record 44 percent of a voting group that Democrats had hoped to keep a lock on has made the appointment of a high-level Hispanic cabinet officer that much more appealing to Republicans.

But the glow over the appointment of the first Hispanic to be the country's chief legal officer is not likely to linger once Mr. Gonzales's nomination goes to the Senate.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that the panel would review issues like the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects - issues in which Mr. Gonzales played a pivotal role.

"These confirmation hearings will be a rare opportunity for the Senate and the public to finally get some answers on several issues for which the administration has resisted accountability, including its use of the Patriot Act, the lack of cooperation with Congress on oversight, and the policies that have been rejected by the courts on the treatment of detainees," Mr. Leahy said.

Mr. Gonzales was the author of one of the most contentious memorandums to surface in the furor that followed the disclosure of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In a draft memorandum to Mr. Bush in early 2002, he wrote that the fight against terrorism had rendered the Geneva Conventions "obsolete" in so far as those international accords safeguarded the way people suspected of terrorism should be interrogated. He also wrote that the conventions were "quaint" in that they afforded prisoners privileges like athletic uniforms and commissary rights.

While it remains unclear whether the memorandum ever reached a final form, the tone and breadth of it reflected the sweep of Mr. Gonzales's legal thinking and what appears to be his willingness to adopt highly aggressive interpretations of the law in the fight against terrorism.

The memorandum was also indicative of his central role as one of Mr. Bush's most trusted legal strategists on critical issues like the rules governing the capture, interrogation, detention and trials of terrorists.

He has been at the center of controversy on other issues. Mr. Gonzales helped write the Patriot Act, managed the selection of judicial nominees and was a vigorous advocate of expanding the powers of the executive branch of the government.

But Mr. Gonzales has also run afoul of many conservatives because of what they judge to be his failure to take a harder line against abortion and affirmative action.

Mr. Gonzales has always declined to discuss in public his personal views about abortion or the Supreme Court ruling that legalized it, Roe v. Wade. But in a case that went before the Texas Supreme Court when he was there, Mr. Gonzales was part of a majority that voted to allow a 17-year-old girl a waiver, allowed for under state law, from the usual requirement that a minor seeking an abortion had to inform her parents.

His record on affirmative action is defined, in the eyes of conservatives, by his role in developing the administration's position in the case last year in which the United States Supreme Court generally preserved affirmative action in university admissions. Mr. Gonzales, conservatives said, did not push hard enough for the administration to call for a complete end to racial preferences in college admissions.

For several years, Mr. Gonzales was rumored to be a likely nominee to the Supreme Court. Word on Wednesday that he would instead go to the Justice Department was met with sighs of relief from conservative activists, who feared that on the Supreme Court he might have impeded their efforts to reverse Roe v. Wade and more generally move the court further rightward on social issues.

"It's been clear for a long time that the president has the utmost confidence in him, and given the many options that were possible, I think attorney general is a pretty good fit for him," said Gary L. Bauer, the president of American Values, a conservative group.

"It would have been problematic if he had been nominated for the court, because it is pretty well clear that he is not as conservative as the chief justice, and that appears to be the first seat that will come open," Mr. Bauer said, referring to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who has thyroid cancer.

Alberto R. Gonzales - the White House declined to release his middle name, saying that Mr. Gonzales prefers the initial - was born on Aug. 4, 1955. He grew up in North Houston in a house built by his father and two uncles, sharing two bedrooms with 10 family members. He and his wife, Rebecca, now have a family of three sons, Graham, Gabriel and Jared.

After high school, he joined the Air Force and was posted to Fort Yukon, Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle. He won an appointment to the Air Force Academy, but after two years he grew restless studying science and engineering and began thinking about law instead.

"I put it in God's hands," he said in his commencement address at Rice in May. "I'd apply to transfer to Rice, and if accepted would pursue a legal career. If denied, I'd continue my military career."

He was accepted, graduated from Rice in 1979, received his law degree from Harvard in 1982 and returned to Houston for a job at Vinson & Elkins, one of the premier law firms in Texas, where he became a partner before going to work for Mr. Bush.

Ralph Blumenthal contributed reporting from Texas for this article.

[Jonas Strider]

i saw that on the news yesterday and they mentioned he was a moderate. sounds good to me. hope he does things fair and square.

[Grojlach]

Nov. 12, 2004
Ashcroft says judges threaten national security by questioning Bush decisions

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Federal judges are jeopardizing national security by issuing rulings contradictory to President Bush's decisions on America's obligations under international treaties and agreements, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday.
In his first remarks since his resignation was announced Tuesday, Ashcroft forcefully denounced what he called "a profoundly disturbing trend" among some judges to interfere in the president's constitutional authority to make decisions during war.

"The danger I see here is that intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations in these critical areas can put at risk the very security of our nation in a time of war," Ashcroft said in a speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers' group.

The Justice Department announced this week it would seek to overturn a ruling by U.S. District Judge James Robertson in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who the government contends was Osama bin Laden's driver.

Robertson halted Hamdan's trial by military commission in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rejecting the Bush administration's position that the Geneva Conventions governing prisoners of war do not apply to al-Qaida members because they are not soldiers of a true state and do not fight by international norms.

Without mentioning that case specifically, Ashcroft criticized rulings he said found "expansive private rights in treaties where they never existed" that run counter to the broad discretionary powers given the president by the Constitution.

"Courts are not equipped to execute the law. They are not accountable to the people," Ashcroft said.

During his successful re-election campaign, Bush repeatedly promised to appoint judges who would adhere to strict interpretations of the Constitution. In addition to numerous lower courts, Bush is likely to appoint at least one and perhaps several justices to the Supreme Court during the next four years.

The administration lost a crucial legal battle this year when a divided Supreme Court determined the president lacks the authority to hold terror suspects classified as enemy combatants indefinitely with no access to lawyers or the ability to challenge their detention.

Ashcroft intends to remain as attorney general until his nominated successor, Alberto Gonzales, is confirmed by the Senate.
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/breakin...4ashcroft.html