Word: ashcroft
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Civil rights groups cried foul and vowed revenge. "It really was a case of John Ashcroft misleading the U.S. Senate," says People for the American Way chief Ralph Neas. "Ronnie White wasn't anti- death penalty or pro-criminal." White had voted to uphold death penalties in 41 out of 59 capital cases that came before him, his allies noted. In most of the cases where he didn't uphold death sentences, he wasn't alone--the decision was unanimous. And in two of six cases in which White wrote for the majority upholding a death sentence...
...Ashcroft allies counter that Ashcroft could not ignore a case in which White was the lone vote to overturn a death penalty--the notorious case of Missouri cop killer James Johnson. In 1991 a sheriff's deputy arrived at Johnson's house after Johnson threatened his wife and daughter with a gun. Johnson shot the deputy in the back, then in the head. He then drove to the home of the local sheriff and shot the sheriff's wife five times during a holiday party; she died in front of her family. He wounded another deputy and killed two more...
...Ashcroft defenders say it was this decision that swung moderate Republicans against White and led them to reject him for the federal court. They dispute the charge that Ashcroft is a racist, noting that as Missouri Governor he appointed the first African-American judge to the court of appeals and signed into law the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. But he also accepted an honorary degree in 1999 from Bob Jones University, which until recently forbade interracial dating, and defended Confederate leaders as "patriots" in Southern Partisan magazine, a pro-Confederacy publication that he praised for helping...
...only civil rights groups that have Ashcroft in their sights. He has always been an ardent abortion foe, so abortion-rights groups view his nomination as "akin to the appointment of George Wallace to be Attorney General in the 1960s," says Rosemary Dempsey, Washington director of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. In 1998 Ashcroft sponsored a constitutional amendment to outlaw all abortions except those needed to save the life of the mother. Bush allows for exceptions in cases of rape or incest, but Ashcroft didn't. His proposal defined human life as beginning at fertilization, which women...
NARAL and Planned Parenthood both mounted unprecedented get-out-the-vote efforts in last year's election. Their state-of-the-art e-mail and phone-bank techniques will now be turned to stopping Ashcroft. But Ashcroft has broad and deep support among social conservatives. More than 180 groups, led by the Free Congress Foundation, have signed on to support him with grass-roots lobbying. Privately, some Democrats say it's useful to rough up Ashcroft, even if just to scare Bush into picking more moderate judges or Justices --and to preclude the chance that Ashcroft might someday land...