Ashcroft’s Complex Tenure At Justice

On Some Issues, He Battled White House

According to former officials, it was not the only time that the former Missouri senator chosen for the Bush Cabinet in part for his ties to the Christian right would challenge the White House in private. In addition to rejecting to the most expansive version of the warrantless eavesdropping program, the officials said, Ashcroft also opposed holding detainees indefinitely at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without some form of due process. He fought to guarantee some rights for those to be tried by newly created military commissions. And he insisted that Zacarias Moussaoui, accused of conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers, be prosecuted in a civilian court.

These internal disputes often put Ashcroft at odds with Vice President Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said the officials, who recalled heated exchanges in front of the president. In the end, the officials said, the conflicts contributed to Ashcroft’s departure at the conclusion of Bush’s first term, when the president replaced him with a close friend from Texas, Alberto R. Gonzales, who presumably would be more deferential to the White House.

Click here for the whole article.  I am now going to repeat something that I wrote last week:

There can now be no doubt now that Alberto “Gonzo” Gonzales is quite the S.O.B. I NEVER thought that I would see the day when John “Pentacostal and proud of it” Ashcroft would be venerated by the left for his stands. That is how bad things are.