Word: ashcrofts
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...after, scoping the possibilities of selling everything from long-grain rice to fiber-optic cable. "[The Cubans] need everything in the world--technology, farms, hospitals," says Ryan. "Illinois would be in a prime position to help them." In a key step toward that goal, Missouri's Republican Senator John Ashcroft, prodded by U.S. farmers desperate for new global markets, introduced a bill this fall to eliminate the stringent licensing rules on sales of food and medicine to Cuba...
...Ashcroft has clear support in the Senate--and behind the scenes among some in the Administration--since a Reuters poll last spring found that 67% of Americans favor ending the embargo. "It's hard for me to find anyone in this building who supports our Cuba policy anymore," says a State Department official. In Florida, where the most ardent anti-Castro lobby resides, a recent Miami Herald survey showed more people against than for the embargo. Meanwhile, cultural contacts between the U.S. and Cuba are at an all-time high, sponsored in large part by U.S. corporations like...
However, the spurious charge of racism obscures a greater threat. Ashcroft began his campaign against White by arguing that he had voted to overturn a death penalty 14 times. Later, the tactics became more sophisticated, and White's votes were compared to others on the court (some of whom, Ashcroft appointees, had voted against more death penalties than he), but the count-the-numbers approach betrays a cynical assumption that any vote to reverse the death penalty is suspect, that the courts should rubber-stamp death sentences instead of conducting meaningful review...
...Ashcroft's campaign against Judge White-- and whatever success it may bring to his campaign against Carnahan in 2000--sends the message to all state judges that if they want to get on the federal bench, they'd better start upholding some death penalties. When a case is hard, as Judge White found Missouri v. Johnson, and when the defendant's right to a new trial is unclear, how will those judges decide? The perverse political incentives make it seem inevitable that a defendant who may not deserve the death penalty will some day receive it because the judges...
...growing ever bolder and more numerous: Washington has relaxed restrictions on direct flights to the island, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue and Illinois's Republican governor George Ryan have both made strong appeals last month to end the embargo, while Missouri GOP senator John Ashcroft is currently promoting a bill to ease restrictions on sales of food and medicine to Cuba. The Ibero-American summit will likely fuel the anti-embargo argument, since the event has clearly provided a boon for the anti-Castro opposition inside Cuba, and whatever kudos Castro has accrued from the arrival...