Word: ashcrofts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Noted "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists." JJOHN ASHCROFT, U.S. Attorney General, defending his expanded emergency powers...
...Ashcroft, who graced the cover of a National Rifle Association magazine this summer, has long opposed using these records for law enforcement purposes out of the fear that it will lead to a national gun registry. He has repeatedly claimed that retaining the records is illegal, even after the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise. As a senator in 1998, Ashcroft tried to amend the law, but his amendment was defeated. Now the attorney general is seeking to change the law on his own by refusing to enforce it, preventing the FBI from accessing the information and attempting to have...
...records from recent background checks for 90 days, for (among other purposes) “investigating, prosecuting, and/or enforcing violations of criminal or civil law.” There could be no more appropriate use of the records than to investigate and prevent acts of terrorism. Even if Ashcroft were right and if current law prevented the FBI from using the records, that law can be changed. The Justice Department has repeatedly asked Congress for more flexibility in wiretapping and other matters, and there’s no reason to leave gun purchases...
...International Association of Chiefs of Police has written two letters asking Ashcroft to release the records to the FBI, but the attorney general has turned a deaf ear to their pleas and to those of senior FBI officials. For a man who has been so dismissive of fundamental liberties and of the right to privacy in all other walks of life, Ashcroft seems determined to protect the privacy of gun owners—even if they’re members of al-Qaeda. In the words he used before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ashcroft’s decision...
...attorney general’s job is to protect public safety, not the gun lobby. Ashcroft should have told his friends in the NRA what he told the Senate: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists...