Word: ashcroft
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Gonzales is certain to be confirmed as John Ashcroft's replacement, especially because Democrats are wary of opposing a Hispanic when their hold on that constituency was weakened in the last election. But Gonzales' nomination raises six issues that are still being sorted out by the government or its watchdogs...
...repeatedly offered swing voters expressly what they told pollsters they did not want: a multiyear commitment in Iraq, a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, Social Security private accounts, restricted federal funding of stem-cell research. The most he would do is hint that radioactive Attorney General John Ashcroft wouldn't make it to a second Bush presidency. But even at the height of the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal, Bush would not consider calls to dump Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "If you're wasting your time coming up with a way to recommend this, don't," he told...
...months. Though his title for the past four years has been White House counsel--the official term for every President's in-house lawyer--his role has been larger than that of any other counsel in memory. That's partly because the White House began to lose patience with Ashcroft not long after he was confirmed. The Attorney General had a political tin ear and a weakness for the spotlight. He drew fire for saying critics of the Patriot Act were giving comfort to the enemy. He operated with a tight cabal of longtime aides who prayed together...
...Ashcroft's methods strengthened Gonzales' hand at the White House, where he performed as a kind of Administration superlawyer, overseeing a wide variety of legal policies across the government, as well as the vetting and selection of judicial nominations. But in his wider policymaking role, Gonzales made his own mistakes. After 9/11, his office became the crossroads of much of the Administration's legal thinking in the war on terrorism--thinking that has not always stood up under scrutiny...
...they just want to rough him up a bit. "It's encouraging that the President has chosen someone less polarizing," said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. "We will have to review his record very carefully, but I can tell you already he's a better candidate than John Ashcroft...