[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 1213-1263]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



           NOMINATION OF JOHN ASHCROFT TO BE ATTORNEY GENERAL

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senate will resume 
consideration of the Ashcroft nomination, which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read the nomination of John Ashcroft, of 
Missouri, to be Attorney General.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the time 
until 9:15 shall be under the control of the majority party.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Under the previous order, the time until 9:30 shall be under the 
control of the Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, after reviewing his testimony before the 
Judiciary Committee and studying his long public record, I cannot 
support the nomination of John Ashcroft to be United States Attorney 
General.
  This is not an easy decision for any of us. We have all served in 
this body with former Senator Ashcroft. I cannot say that I was a 
personal friend of his. We never associated socially or anything like 
that, but I did have dealings with Senator Ashcroft, as we all do 
around here, on matters of legislative importance.
  Quite frankly, in my dealings with him, I always found him to be 
courteous to me and my staff. I found that we could work together even 
though we did not have the same views, perhaps, on certain pieces of 
legislation. I found that we worked together in the spirit of 
compromise here on the Senate floor.
  When John Ashcroft's name was first announced as the nominee for 
Attorney General, I, of course, thought to myself, he certainly would 
not have been my first choice, but then again George Bush was not my 
first choice for President. But I recognized that Presidents should 
have fairly large leeway to have the people around them they want.
  But, again, we also have an obligation, a constitutional obligation, 
in the advise and consent clause in the U.S. Constitution to look over 
those individuals, to give careful scrutiny to those individuals, to 
make sure that we, as a body collectively--at least by majority vote--
are able to believe that nominated officials will have the honesty, the 
character, and wherewithal to carry out their duties and to serve all 
of the American people well.
  After long and difficult deliberation, I have come to the conclusion 
that there are significant questions raised on John Ashcroft's fitness 
to be our Nation's chief law enforcement officer.
  First and foremost, I have serious concerns about the misleading 
statements Mr. Ashcroft made during the confirmation hearings.
  As we all know, Senator Ashcroft strongly opposed the nomination of 
Mr. Jim Hormel as Ambassador to Luxembourg. Jim Hormel, a distinguished 
lawyer, successful businessman, educator, philanthropist, a scion of 
our famous midwestern families. We all have heard of Hormel Meats. We 
probably had Hormel bacon in the morning, things such as that. They are 
a fine family who came from Iowa and Minnesota. Mr. Hormel, of course, 
has taken up his residency, as of late, in San Francisco, I don't know 
how many years ago, but some years ago. Prior to that, he had been Dean 
of Students at the University of Chicago Law School.
  I have known Mr. Hormel for many years. I consider him a friend. As I 
said, not only is he a great lawyer, businessman, educator, and 
philanthropist, but he is also an outstanding family man.
  In 1998, Mr. Ashcroft said he opposed Mr. Hormel's nomination because 
he had--and I quote John Ashcroft's own words--``actively supported the 
gay lifestyle.''
  Further, Mr. Ashcroft said that a person's sexual conduct--and I 
quote again Mr. Ashcroft's own words--``is within what could be 
considered and what is eligible for consideration'' for ambassadorial 
nominees.
  However, in his testimony just 2 weeks ago, Mr. Ashcroft denied his 
opposition had anything to do with Jim Hormel's sexual orientation. He 
said he opposed him because, again, he had known Jim Hormel for a long 
time, going back to the days when Hormel had--and I quote again John 
Ashcroft--``recruited him'' for law school.
  Mr. Ashcroft said he based his opposition to Jim Hormel being 
Ambassador

[[Page 1214]]

to Luxembourg on the totality of Hormel's record. I spoke with 
Ambassador Hormel just last week about this. He said he had never had 
any contact with Senator Ashcroft, not when he was dean of students at 
the University of Chicago Law School and not since he was nominated in 
1997. He did not recruit Mr. Ashcroft for law school. As dean of 
students, of course--and there are a lot of students there--Mr. Hormel 
was honest; he said: I can't remember. Maybe when he was a student, I 
might have met him. I might have talked to him. I might have said 
something to a group of students. He may have come into my office for 
something. But I have no recollection of that.
  Furthermore, Mr. Hormel emphatically stated he did not ``recruit'' 
John Ashcroft for Chicago Law School. When he was nominated in 1997, 
Mr. Hormel repeatedly tried to meet with John Ashcroft to talk to him. 
Even if I oppose someone, I at least give them the courtesy to come in 
and make their case. I have always made that policy, because maybe 
there is something I haven't heard or something I would look at 
differently. John Ashcroft would not even meet with Jim Hormel.
  Mr. Hormel did get a recess appointment from President Clinton, 
served well, and was distinguished in his post in Luxembourg. I asked 
people at the State Department in charge of that area how he performed, 
and they said extremely well. They said that he had conducted his 
position in the best interests of the United States and as a 
distinguished Ambassador. Again, sexual orientation should not have any 
bearing on a person's fitness for that job or any other job.
  John Ashcroft also testified that he has never asked job applicants 
about their sexual orientation. But in a recent Washington Post 
article, a health care expert, Paul Offner, who had interviewed for a 
cabinet post under then Governor Ashcroft, remembers differently. 
Offner, who is now part of the Georgetown University faculty, recalled 
that Governor Ashcroft's first question to him was whether or not he 
had the same sexual preferences as most men. At the time it happened, 
Offner, also told others about the interview question.
  If this is true, this does not seem to be the kind of individual who 
should serve as Attorney General of the United States of America.
  I am also disturbed by how, as an elected official--namely, U.S. 
Senator--Mr. Ashcroft used unseemly political tactics, including the 
reckless and unwarranted destruction of a judicial nominee's 
reputation, a sitting judge's reputation, for his own political 
benefit. Senator Ashcroft led the campaign to block the Federal 
judicial nomination of Missouri Supreme Court Justice Ronnie White in 
order to gain political points in his reelection bid against then-
sitting Gov. Mel Carnahan. Ashcroft on this very floor referred to the 
distinguished and accomplished judge as ``pro-criminal and activist,'' 
a man with a ``tremendous bent toward criminal activity.''
  Mr. Ashcroft stood on this floor--I remember listening to him, and I 
couldn't believe someone actually said this about a sitting State 
supreme court justice from his own State--that Judge White had ``a 
tremendous bent toward criminal activity.''
  I don't know Ronnie White. I have met him only once. But after I 
looked over his record it seemed to me that what Mr. Ashcroft was 
saying was not only false, it was defamatory. And it is behavior 
unworthy of a U.S. Attorney General. It is one thing in a political 
campaign to take on your political opponent and hit him with tough 
words in tough races, but you can fight back. I have been hit pretty 
hard in some of my political campaigns. But when the election is over, 
you get over it because at least you are able to fight back. Here was a 
Senator using the privileges of the floor of the Senate to personally 
defame the character of a sitting Supreme Court justice of the State of 
Missouri when that judge had no ability to fight back.
  Finally Mr. White did get his day, sort of, in court before the 
Judiciary Committee. I commend Senator Leahy for making sure Ronnie 
White got his day here to show that he is a distinguished justice, that 
he has absolutely the opposite of a bent toward criminal activity. He 
also strongly believes in upholding the law, ensuring that every 
person, no matter how low that person is, no matter how heinous the 
crime--that every person has competent representation and a fair trial. 
Mr. Ashcroft's own words and what he did to Justice White make me 
wonder if Mr. Ashcroft thinks every person, no matter how low, no 
matter how heinous the crime, no matter how much you disagree with that 
person, is entitled to competent representation and a fair trial.
  I also have concerns about John Ashcroft's testimony about the 
desegregation court order in Missouri when he was attorney general and 
governor. John Ashcroft said that Missouri did nothing wrong. But I 
think most people would agree that upholding segregation and blatantly 
defying a federal court order is the very definition of wrong. This was 
in the 1980s, not the 1950s.
  Also while Governor, Mr. Ashcroft appointed the election boards in 
St. Louis County and in St. Louis city. The county, an affluent area, 
84 percent white, votes mainly Republican; the city, less affluent, 47 
percent black, votes mainly Democratic. During that period of time, the 
county hired 1,500 volunteers, such as out of the League of Women 
Voters, for training, for registration of voters. During that same 
period of time, the city board trained zero because the city election 
board, appointed by John Ashcroft, refused to follow the policy on 
volunteers used by his appointed board in the county and throughout the 
state. The State legislature saw this anomaly and passed two bills in 
1988 and 1989 to require the city to do the same as the county and the 
state. Governor Ashcroft vetoed both of those bills.
  I am also troubled by parts of John Ashcroft's record which reflects 
poorly on his commitment to seeking justice for all Americans. Despite 
his statements to the contrary, I am simply not convinced that John 
Ashcroft will diligently and thoroughly uphold all of our laws.
  I am particularly concerned about John Ashcroft's statements and 
actions regarding reproductive rights. Throughout his career, he has 
been a staunch opponent of the right of women to make their own 
reproductive decisions. He even wrote legislation to criminalize 
abortion, even in the cases of rape and incest. Yet during his recent 
testimony, John Ashcroft told committee members he believes that Roe v. 
Wade is the law of the land--and he would not try to overturn it. He 
even stated, ``No woman should fear being threatened or coerced in 
seeking constitutionally protected health services.'' How are America's 
women supposed to believe John Ashcroft in his recent testimony on a 
woman's right to choose when he had repeatedly stated during his 
political career that there is no constitutional right to choose and 
that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided? I'm not sure he can.
  I am not sure anyone can simply switch off decades of hostility to 
reproductive rights, intolerance towards homosexuals, and other views, 
and then fairly and aggressively enforce the laws--he deeply believes 
are wrong.
  As I expect, John Ashcroft will be confirmed despite my vote. I hope 
they will prove me wrong.
  I thank the President.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a number of 
editorials and material regarding the nomination be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 Ashcroft Is the Wrong Man for Justice

       John Ashcroft, the man who would be attorney general, is 
     quite a deft backpedaler. Just a few weeks ago, he was a 
     right-wing ideologue dedicated to banning abortion and 
     fighting the civil-rights tide. Now he says he's eager to 
     enforce the laws he hates. So which Ashcroft are we getting--
     last year's true believer or a Bush-era compromiser?
       It's impossible to tell, and maybe it doesn't matter. 
     Whether Ashcroft is an extremist in centrist garb or some 
     sort of changeling, Americans have reason to worry. They 
     needn't fret because of Ashcroft's conservative leanings; 
     anyone President Bush

[[Page 1215]]

     sends to Justice is bound to lean that way. They should worry 
     instead about Ashcroft's integrity. As last week's hearings 
     evinced, he has less of it than his backers like to think.
       For starters, there's the small matter of the truth. 
     Ashcroft isn't telling it. His declarations before the Senate 
     contradict his record. Some of his equivocation is penny-
     ante--such as his claim that he'd never have spoken so fondly 
     of proslavery confederate leaders to Southern Partisan 
     magazine back in 1998 if he'd known the rag favored 
     slaveholding itself.
       But other Ashcroft remarks are bold-faced revisionism: His 
     claim that he'd been ``found guilty of no wrong'' and 
     faithfully heeded all court orders in a St. Louis 
     desegregation case is false; the record shows Ashcroft 
     habitually flouted court orders. His insistence that he 
     derailed a federal judgeship for Missouri Supreme Court 
     Justice Ronnie White for principled reasons is belied by the 
     stealth, slurs and distortions Ashcroft used to achieve his 
     end.
       An archaeologist could find a small heap of twisted facts 
     in last week's hearings, and with them many hints that 
     Ashcroft isn't the sort of man who ought to be running the 
     Justice Department. But this would be true even if Ashcroft 
     had been forthright about his past.
       The central question of integrity involves the way 
     Ashcroft's mind works. What are senators to make of a man who 
     has spent his life expressing extreme convictions--and who 
     now says he won't lift a finger to fulfill them? They can 
     doubt him, which would be natural enough. The confirmation 
     process is generally regarded as a ceremonial gauntlet to be 
     run, not a serious test of honor. Dissembling is almost part 
     of the game, and it's up to the Senate to separate the clever 
     wheat from the lying chaff.
       Perhaps Ashcroft falls into the second category. Perhaps 
     what he's saying isn't what he plans to do once he's got the 
     Justice Department under his thumb. The prospect is haunting, 
     and is reason enough to reject Ashcroft's nomination.
       But what if Ashcroft is telling the truth--or at least 
     thinks he is? It could very well be, as the man himself said, 
     that Ashcroft really plans to enforce every last law of the 
     land whether he likes it or not. If that's the case, doubts 
     about Ashcroft should double. It's worth wondering about a 
     man who has spent his life vowing to topple the laws he now 
     says he'll enforce. Why should he want to do this? How will 
     he manage it? How can he possibly muster the spirit to do it 
     well?
       An attorney general isn't just an attorney. He's also a 
     visionary, a keeper of the flame of American justice. He must 
     believe with all he has not just in the sanctity of ``the 
     law,'' but in the laws themselves. A quibble with a statute 
     here and there isn't enough to disqualify a seeker of the 
     office. But a nominee who has raged all his life against the 
     guiding lights of American law--against the promises of the 
     Constitution itself--is not a fit flame-keeper.
                                  ____


          John Ashcroft Should Be Rejected as Attorney General

       It was not in the United States' best interests for George 
     W. Bush, the incoming president who vowed to unite the 
     country after a bruising and narrowly decided election, to 
     nominate for attorney general a man of such extreme beliefs 
     as John Ashcroft of Missouri.
       While that bell cannot be unrung, the Senate should not 
     accommodate or be party to so drastic a move away from the 
     political center that the country is so comfortable with now.
       In this unique case, senators--among them Washington 
     state's Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell--should forego their 
     customary deference to a president's Cabinet choice and 
     reject Ashcroft.
       Not because of his beliefs. Because of his record as a two-
     term state attorney general, the public office he has held 
     that most closely resembles the one he seeks. As the nation's 
     chief attorney, he would lead the Justice Department, a 
     mammoth government agency that has been described as being at 
     the front line of battles over emotional social issues like 
     civil rights, abortion, crime and the selection of federal 
     judges.
       Personally, and as a governor and member of Congress, 
     Ashcroft had every right to vociferously oppose abortion, 
     even in the case of rape and incest; seek to limit government 
     funds for family planning, and work to defeat modest gun 
     control regulations.
       In advance of Ashcroft's hearing before the Senate 
     Judiciary Committee, we posed a question to the senators who 
     would be asked to confirm the nomination: Could they be 
     persuaded that Ashcroft would enforce the laws as they are, 
     not as he would like them to be?
       It is clear from the resulting testimony and Ashcroft's 
     long public record in Missouri that the answer is likely to 
     be no. As Missouri attorney general, Ashcroft was not 
     regularly even-handed or moderate on at least a couple of 
     thorny social issues that remain front and center in the 
     country's psyche--women's reproductive rights and civil 
     rights.
       He attempted on several occasions to severely restrict a 
     woman's legal right to choose an abortion by seeking out 
     cases in which that was not the main issue and forcing them 
     upward through various layers of appeals to the U.S. Supreme 
     Court.
       The end goal was to overturn Roe vs. Wade. His official 
     record invites serious questions whether he would (1) do the 
     same on the federal stage and (2) vigorously enforce existing 
     laws restricting violent and obstructive demonstrations at 
     abortion clinics by anti-abortion opponents.
       Aside from Ashcroft's major misstatement during the hearing 
     about the culpability of the state in a long-running school 
     desegregation case, the record paints a picture of an 
     attorney general who obstructed the cause of equal education 
     for children of all races.
       When a federal judge ordered the state and city of St. 
     Louis to submit plans for voluntary desegregation of the 
     public schools, Ashcroft balked. The court finally threatened 
     to hold the state in contempt if it did not meet the 
     deadline: ``The court can draw only one conclusion--the state 
     has, as a matter of deliberate policy, decided to defy the 
     authority of the court.''
       Moreover, Gary Orfield, a Harvard University education 
     professor and leading expert on school desegregation, said 
     Ashcroft was the ``most resistant individual'' he encountered 
     in more than 30 federal court cases on the issue.
       The record demonstrates Ashcroft is not a uniter, but a 
     divider--something Bush and the country cannot afford in 
     these early stages of healing.
       Within the ranks of the National Association of Attorneys 
     General are 17 people who share Bush's political affiliation, 
     including moderates such as Mike Fisher of Pennsylvania and 
     Carla Stovall of Kansas. We submit either would be a more 
     suitable U.S. attorney general than John Ashcroft.
                                  ____


           [From the New York Times, Saturday, Jan. 20, 2001]

                         After the Ball Is Over

                            (By Frank Rich)

       Presidents come and go, but a Washington cliche is forever. 
     Today we'll be lectured repeatedly on the poignancy of a 
     president's exit (not that he's actually going anywhere), the 
     promise of a new president's arrival, and on the glory of our 
     Republic. We'll be reminded that there are no tanks in the 
     streets when America changes leaders--only cheesy floats and 
     aural assault weapons in the guise of high school bands.
       All true, and yet at this inaugural more than any other in 
     any American's lifetime there is a cognitive dissonance 
     between the patriotic sentiment and the reality. More 
     Americans voted for the candidate who lost the election than 
     the one who won. The Washington Post/ABC News poll says that 
     only 41 percent believe the winner ``has a mandate to carry 
     out the agenda'' of his campaign. Even before the Florida 
     fracas, the country's black population rejected the 
     republican candidate (who assiduously tried to attract black 
     voters) by a larger margin than any since Barry Goldwater 
     (who had voted against the Civil Rights Act). And now come 
     calamities ignored in a campaign that dithered about 
     prescription drugs, tax cuts and schools: an energy melt-down 
     in the nation's biggest state, and a possible economic 
     downturn.
       George W. Bush seems like an earnest man. When he says he 
     has come to Washington to ``change the tone'' and ``unite, 
     not divide,'' I don't doubt his sincerity. But so far his 
     actions are those of another entitled boomer who is utterly 
     blind to his own faults. He narcissistically believes things 
     to be so (and his intentions pure) because he says they are.
       Change the tone? As Clinton-Gore raised $33 million largely 
     from their corporate masters for their first inaugural, so 
     Bush-Cheney have solicited $35 million from, among others, 
     the securities firms that want to get their hands on your 
     privatized Social Security retirement accounts and the 
     pharmaceutical companies that want to protect the prices of 
     prescription drugs. And already foreign money is making its 
     entrance--in the form of a legal but unsavory $100,000 
     contribution from the deputy prime minister of Lebanon, 
     channeled through his son.
       Now comes the news--reported by the columnist Robert 
     Novak--that John Huang, the convicted Clinton-Gore fund-
     raiser, repeatedly took the Fifth Amendment in November when 
     questioned in court about his alleged fiscal ties to 
     Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell, the No. 1 
     opponent of the John McCain crusade for campaign finance 
     reform that Mr. Bush has yet to credibly embrace. (Mr. 
     McConnell is also the husband of Mr. Bush's latest labor 
     secretary-designate, Elaine Chao.)
       Change the tone? Hard as it is to imagine that anyone could 
     choose an attorney general as polarizing as the last, Mr. 
     Bush has outdone himself. With a single cabinet pick he has 
     reproduced the rancor that attended the full Clinton legal 
     troika of Reno, Hubbell & Foster.
       There's been much debate about whether John Ashcroft is a 
     racist--a hard case to make against a man whose history of 
     playing the race card to pander to voters is balanced by his 
     record of black judicial appointments. But there has not been 
     nearly enough debate about whether our incipient chief legal 
     officer has lied under oath to the Senate.

[[Page 1216]]

       Perhaps his seeming fudging and reversals of his previous 
     stands on Roe v. Wade and gun control can be rationalized as 
     clever lawyerese. Perhaps some of his evasions can be 
     dismissed as a politicians' typical little white lies--and I 
     do mean white--such as when he denies he knew that a magazine 
     he favored with an interview, Southern Partisan, espoused the 
     slaveholding views of Southern partisans. But it took a 
     bolder kind of dissembling to contradict his own paper trail 
     in public office. After he swore that the state of Missouri 
     ``had been found guilty of no wrong'' in a landmark St. Louis 
     desegregation case and that ``both as attorney general and as 
     governor'' of the state he had followed ``all'' court orders 
     in the matter, The Washington Post needed only a day to 
     report the truth: A federal district judge in fact ruled that 
     the state was a ``primary constitutional wrongdoer'' in the 
     matter and threatened to hold Mr. Ashcroft in contempt for 
     his ``continual delay and failure to comply'' with court 
     orders.
       Mr. Ashcroft may have left even more land mines in his 
     testimony about the businessman, philanthropist and former 
     law school official James Hormel, the Clinton ambassador to 
     Luxembourg whose nomination he had fought. Asked by Patrick 
     Leahy, the Judiciary chairman, if he had opposed Mr. Hormel 
     because Mr. Hormel is gay, Mr. Aschroft answered, ``I did 
     not.'' Then why did he oppose Mr. Hormel? ``Well, frankly, I 
     had known Mr. Hormel for a long time. He had recruited me, 
     when I was a student in college, to go to the University of 
     Chicago Law School,'' Mr. Ashcroft testified, before adding a 
     cryptic answer he would repeat two times as Mr. Leahy pressed 
     him: ``I made a judgment that it would be ill advised to make 
     him ambassador based on the totality of the record.''
       The implication of this creepy testimony is that Mr. 
     Ashcroft, having known the 68-year-old Mr. Hormel for 
     decades, had some goods on him. The use of the word 
     ``recruit'' by Mr. Ashcroft also had a loaded connotation in 
     context, since it's common for those on the religious right 
     who argue (as Mr. Ashcroft does) that sexual orientation is a 
     choice to accuse homosexuals of ``recruiting'' the young.
       No senator followed up Mr. Ashcroft's testimony about Mr. 
     Hormel, who, unlike another subject of an Ashcroft character 
     assassination, Judge Ronnie White, was not invited to testify 
     at the hearings. I located Mr. Hormel by phone in Washington, 
     where he had traveled for final meetings at the State 
     Department after concluding his service in Luxembourg. He 
     strongly disputed Mr. Ashcroft's version of events.
       ``I don't recall ever recruiting anybody for the University 
     of Chicago,'' Mr. Hormel said in our conversation Wednesday 
     night. As an assistant dean involved with admissions, he 
     says, he might have met Mr. Ashcroft in passing while touring 
     campuses to give talks to prospective law school applicants, 
     or in later office visits about grades or curriculum. But, 
     Mr. Hormel quickly adds, he doesn't recall ``a single 
     conversation with John Ashcroft.'' Nor has Mr. Hormel seen 
     him in the three decades since; Mr. Ashcroft didn't have the 
     courtesy to respond to repeated requests for a meeting during 
     Mr. Hormel's own confirmation process and didn't bother to 
     attend Mr. Hormel's hearing before opposing him.
       ``I think he made insinuations which would lead people to 
     have a complete misunderstanding of my very limited 
     relationship with him,'' Mr. Hormel says. ``I fear that there 
     was an inference he created that he knew me and based on that 
     knowledge he came to the conclusion I wasn't fit to become an 
     ambassador. I find that very disturbing. He kept repeating 
     the phrase `the totality of the record.' I don't know what 
     record he's talking about. I don't know of anything I've ever 
     done that's been called unethical.'' The record that Mr. 
     Ashcroft so casually smeared includes an appointment to the 
     U.N. in 1996 that was confirmed by the Foreign Relations 
     Committee on which Mr. Ashcroft then sat.
       Since Mr. Bush could easily have avoided the divisiveness 
     of the Ashcroft choice by picking an equally conservative 
     attorney general with less baggage, some of his opponents 
     will start calling him ``stupid'' again. That seems unfair. 
     Mr. Bush's real problem is arrogance--he thinks we are 
     stupid. He thinks that if he vouches incessantly for the 
     ``good heart'' of a John Ashcroft, that settles it. It 
     hasn't. Polls showed an even split on the nomination well 
     before the hearings. He thinks that if he fills the stage 
     with black faces at a white convention and poses incessantly 
     with black schoolkids and talks about being the ``inclusive'' 
     president ``of everybody,'' he'll persuade minority voters 
     he's compassionate. He hasn't.
       George W. Bush likes to boast that he doesn't watch TV. He 
     didn't even tune in as the nation's highest court debated his 
     fate, leaving his princely retainers to bring him bulletins. 
     Maybe it's time for him to start listening; he might even 
     learn why so many Americans aren't taking his word for John 
     Ashcroft's ``heart.'' I don't doubt that our new president 
     will give a poetic Inaugural Address today, but if he remains 
     out of touch with the country, he will not be able to govern 
     tomorrow.
                                  ____


          [From the Austin American Statesman, Jan. 19, 2001]

                  Ashcroft's Pledge To Enforce the Law

       President-elect George W. Bush missed a chance to select a 
     uniter to heal divisions wrought by the bruising presidential 
     election when he chose John Ashcroft to be his nominee for 
     attorney general.
       The Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings this week on 
     Capitol Hill have exposed the grave reservations some 
     senators and witnesses have about Ashcroft's fitness for the 
     role of guardian of our country's laws and all Americans' 
     constitutional rights because of his staunchly conservative 
     record. At the same time, the hearings have galvanized 
     Ashcroft's supporters, who praise him as a man of character, 
     principle and honesty, a lawyer who would bring ample 
     leadership experience to the job.
       Early indications are that Ashcroft will win Senate 
     confirmation. He was, after all, a member of the Senate, 
     having lost re-election in November. His colleagues know him 
     well and would need extraordinary evidence to sink his 
     nomination. It is customary for senators to give deference to 
     a president in selecting his team to reflect his views. As 
     any boss would attest, that tradition makes sense in building 
     a loyal team, but so does the Senate's valuable role in 
     providing confirmation.
       The Judiciary Committee is carefully probing Ashcroft's 
     record as Missouri's attorney general for two terms, governor 
     for two terms and senator for one. Ironically, the man from 
     the Show Me State is being grilled to tell us how he will 
     perform as U.S. attorney general. While his record is mixed--
     reflecting troubling stands on desegregation, gun control and 
     abortion rights--his words to the committee offer reassurance 
     that can only be tested with time.
       The attorney general serves as the country's chief law 
     enforcement officer, vets federal judge nominees, decides 
     which laws to challenge, enforces civil-rights laws and 
     safeguards liberties, including women's reproductive rights.
       In his most important pledge, he told the committee his 
     personal beliefs would not interfere with the job he will be 
     sworn to do.
       ``I understand that being attorney general means enforcing 
     the laws as they are written, not enforcing my own personal 
     preference,'' he told the senators. ``I pledge to you that 
     strict enforcement of the rule of law will be the cornerstone 
     of justice.''
       Ashcroft is a fierce opponent of the U.S. Supreme Court's 
     landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. He 
     supports a constitutional amendment that would prohibit 
     abortions even in cases of rape or incest and would allow 
     them only if the mother's life were in danger. In the 
     hearings, he said he would not seek to challenge Roe v. Wade 
     and viewed the abortion decisions as ``the settled law of the 
     land.'' He emphasized he knows ``the difference between an 
     enactment role and an enforcement role. During my time as a 
     public official, I have followed the law.''
       He defended his fight against landmark desegregation cases 
     in St. Louis and Kansas City, saying he had never opposed 
     integration. But The Washington Post reported Thursday that 
     court documents show the state of Missouri was labeled by a 
     federal district judge as a ``primary constitutional 
     wrongdoer'' in perpetuating segregated schools in St. Louis. 
     In 1981, U.S. District Judge William Hungate threatened to 
     hold then-state Attorney General Ashcroft and the state in 
     contempt for ``continual delay and failure to comply'' with 
     orders to file a desegregation plan. Hungate wrote later, 
     ``The state has, as a matter of deliberate policy, decided to 
     defy the authority of this court.''
       Ashcroft also had to deflect criticism for blocking Ronnie 
     White, the first black Missouri Supreme Court justice, from 
     becoming a federal judge. In U.S. Senate proceedings in 1999, 
     Ashcroft called White ``pro-criminal,'' although White voted 
     to uphold the death penalty in 41 of 59 cases. ``I deeply 
     resent those baseless accusations,'' White told the Judiciary 
     Committee on Thursday. Ashcroft said White's dissents didn't 
     meet the standards for retrying cases.
       Ashcroft's defenders make their best case when they give 
     examples of how the nominee enforced laws to which he was 
     personally opposed. He once argued as attorney general 
     against the dissemination of religious materials on public 
     school grounds, even though he favored the practice. He 
     created the structure for a lottery when it won approval in 
     Missouri, even though he calls gambling a ``cancer.'' In 
     other matters, he balanced eight straight budgets, increased 
     education funding, championed consumer protection and 
     advocated online privacy bills.
       If his nomination is affirmed, as it appears it will be, in 
     time Ashcroft will be tested on his words to senators that no 
     part of the Justice Department is more important than the 
     Civil Rights Division and on his pronouncement, ``My primary 
     personal belief is that the law is supreme.'' Americans will 
     be counting on him to show us by his actions that his words 
     weren't convenient window-dressing for a record that reflects 
     effective public service but falls short of inspiring 
     national bipartisanship.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the

[[Page 1217]]

time until 9:45 a.m. is under the control of the Senator from South 
Dakota, Mr. Johnson.
  Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, while I have cast votes in favor of all 
15 of President Bush's nominees to come thus far before the Senate, I 
rise today to say, sadly, that I cannot vote in favor of Senator John 
Ashcroft for the office of Attorney General of the United States.
  My position on Cabinet level nominees during both Republican and 
Democratic Presidencies has remained the same: a presumption in favor 
of a President's nomination rests with the nominee, and they should be 
rejected by the Senate only under extraordinary circumstances. Thus far 
during the 107th Congress, I have voted in favor of: Paul O'Neill for 
Treasury Secretary; Spencer Abraham for Energy Secretary; Donald Evans 
for Commerce Secretary; Donald Rumsfeld for Defense Secretary; Ann 
Veneman for Agriculture Secretary; Roderick Paige for Education 
Secretary; Colin Powell for Secretary of State; Melquiades Martinez as 
Housing and Urban Development Secretary; Anthony Principi as Secretary 
of Veterans Affairs; Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. to be Director of the 
Office of Management and Budget; Tommy G. Thompson for Secretary of 
Health and Human Services; Norman Mineta as Transportation Secretary; 
Elaine Chao as Secretary of Labor; Gale Norton as Interior Secretary; 
and Christine Todd Whitman as Environmental Protection Agency Director.
  Even though numerous of these people have used positions that are 
contrary to my own, I have respected the President's nominations, and 
have cast my votes on all 15 of these instances in favor of the 
President's nominee.
  The U.S. Constitution, however, requires the Senate to consider 
consent or rejection of Cabinet nominees, and the Senate was not 
intended by the founders of our Nation to be simply a ``rubber stamp'' 
for any President. I am particularly troubled by this nomination for 
Attorney General, knowing that office does not serve as ``the 
President's personal lawyer''--the President has White House counsel 
for that purpose--but that the Attorney General serves as the peoples' 
lawyer; he is an advocate for all Americans in our courts of law.
  I have applauded President Bush's expressions of support for 
bipartisan Government and the kind of political moderation that will 
bring Americans together rather than tear them apart. In turn, I have 
helped organize a ``centrist caucus'' of Republicans and Democrats in 
the Senate, and a ``New Democratic'' organization consisting of 
moderate Democrats committed to working with moderate Republicans. I 
believe this is the kind of Government the American people want, and 
that they are weary of political extremism and harsh ideologies of 
either the left or right.
  I must conclude, based on testimony in Senate hearings, and from a 
review of Senator Ashcroft's years in elective office, that this man is 
the wrong man at the wrong time for the high office of Attorney 
General. If ever there was a nominee who has committed his years of 
public service to rejecting bipartisanship and moderation, it is 
Senator Ashcroft. This nominee has stated repeatedly that he will never 
be a party to moderation, or to conciliation between the parties. He 
has consistently mocked the very notion of bipartisanship during his 
years in the Senate. He is famous for his observation when he says that 
only two things will be found in the middle of the road--dead skunks 
and moderates, and I will be neither. How now, can Senator Ashcroft 
gain the confidence of all the American people that he will be their 
defender and their advocate?
  Senator Ashcroft refuses to distance himself from Bob Jones 
University where he received an honorary degree, despite that 
institution's harsh criticism of the Pope as ``anti-Christ'' and the 
Roman Catholic and Mormon religions as ``cults.'' He declines to 
disavow the Southern Partisan Quarterly Review, a magazine which, 
incredibly, has defended slavery. He has sponsored as many as seven 
constitutional amendments to the U.S. Constitution, including one which 
would outlaw most forms of contraception, and take away a woman's 
constitutional right to determine for herself whether to have an early 
abortion, even where rape, incest, or severe physical injury would be 
involved.
  Senator Ashcroft's record indicates that he has not always 
distinguished between his strident advocacy and his willingness to 
enforce the law of the land. As the Missouri Attorney General, he did 
all in his power to undermine a voluntary school desegregation plan in 
St. Louis, denouncing voluntary desegregation as ``an outrage against 
human decency.'' The St. Louis Post Dispatch described his campaign as 
``exploiting and encouraging the worst racist sentiments that exist in 
the state.''
  Perhaps most of all, I am troubled by Senator Ashcroft's handling of 
the Judge White nomination. After the Pope, in a visit to St. Louis, 
had convinced Governor Mel Carnahan, Senator Ashcroft's opponent at the 
time, to not execute a certain Missouri prisoner, Ashcroft saw an 
opportunity to vilify Carnahan as ``soft on crime.'' One of his 
strategies was to depict a distinguished and highly regarded African 
American judge as ``anti-death penalty'' and use the blocking of his 
nomination to Federal district court as a high profile means of 
claiming he would be tougher on crime then Governor Carnahan. This 
despite the fact that Judge White had been endorsed by Republicans and 
Democrats as well as the Missouri Bar Association and had upheld death 
sentences at about the same rate as all other members of the Missouri 
Supreme Court.
  The very conservative columnist Stuart Taylor, wrote that the Judge 
White incident alone renders Senator Ashcroft to be ``unfit to be 
Attorney General.'' Taylor stated, ``The reason is that during an 
important debate on a sensitive manner, then-Senator Ashcroft abused 
the power of his office by descending to demagoguery, dishonesty and 
character assassination.'' I do not contend that Mr. Ashcroft is a 
racist, but I do believe his handling of this matter was characterized 
by naked political opportunism, dishonesty, and an utter disregard for 
justice.
  I have no illusions about the end result of the vote on the Senate 
floor; Senator Ashcroft will be confirmed. I have stated my opposition 
to any filibuster effort on this mater. A filibuster would have 
resulted in the need for Senator Ashcroft to secure 60 votes rather 
than 51. While tactically, this might have increased the likelihood of 
defeating his nomination, it is a process which has never been used on 
Cabinet confirmations before, although Senator Ashcroft, himself, has 
used it against sub-Cabinet appointments and has frequently voted 
against Cabinet nominees. I believe President Bush is entitled to a 
fair, up-and-down vote on his nominee. Although the confirmation is 
then, virtually certain, I want to make it clear that I will have 
nothing to do with supporting this particular one of the 16 
Presidential nominations to come before the Senate so far.
  Senator Ashcroft, I believe, is the wrong man to help heal America's 
divisions, the wrong man to lead the U.S. Department of Justice, and 
the wrong man to serve as the guardian of the constitutional rights of 
all the diverse people of our nation. I take my oath to the U.S. 
Constitution seriously, and I also take my South Dakota values of 
fairness, and integrity very seriously--for that reason I will vote no 
on this nomination.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I thank my friend from South Dakota. He is 
one of the most thoughtful Members of this body. I know he has spent a 
great deal of time researching this. I know on an issue such as this, 
when it was time to make his decision, there were only two elements 
that totally influenced him--his conscience and his oath of office. I 
know my friend from South Dakota upheld them both.
  Mr. President, I do not see anybody on the Republican side at the 
moment. The order gives them control of this debate from 9:45 until 10 
o'clock. I ask consent to be able to continue. I know I have 4 minutes 
remaining, but if need be, I ask unanimous consent to take

[[Page 1218]]

another 5 minutes with the understanding I will yield that back 
immediately if a member of the Republican Party shows up to take their 
time, and I so ask unanimous consent.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, my good friend from Arizona, Senator Kyl, 
had mentioned me by name on several occasions during his remarks. I 
will take a moment to respond to two of the points of the distinguished 
Senator from Arizona.
  First, he said we somehow put Senator Ashcroft in an impossible 
catch-22 situation where, if he promises to enforce the law, it is 
described as a confirmation evolution or a metamorphosis. I think that 
is a significant oversimplification of what the record shows.
  I had the record here yesterday. It is well over 2 feet high in just 
the questions and answers.
  It also oversimplifies what the job of the Attorney General is. It is 
not simply to enforce the law. Nobody questions the fact that if you 
have some terrible crime--Oklahoma City, for example--whoever is the 
Attorney General will enforce the law and bring down the full force of 
the majesty of the law of this country regarding something that 
heinous. In airplane hijacking, assassination, any one of these things 
where the Attorney General gets involved in making decisions of who 
gets prosecuted, what the penalties are, nobody questions, no matter 
who is Attorney General, instituting the full force of that law.
  However, it is the discretionary areas that are troublesome. Many 
Members in this body have been prosecutors. We know everybody who is an 
Attorney General, a district attorney, is faced with a number of issues 
where you can apply the law at any one area of severity. We all know 
you can decide the interest of society might be not to apply the law, 
not to seek an indictment. We also know that any prosecutor has broad 
discretionary powers in what to investigate and what not to 
investigate; when to initiate a case, when to withhold a case; when to 
drop a matter or to settle a case. What do you do, for example, in 
antitrust? Do you bring the suit? Do you drop the suit? What do you do 
in seeking a civil rights remedy? Do you look into it or not? What 
happens if you think there has been voter fraud that may affect your 
party and not the other party? Do you still look at it as strictly, or 
not?
  The Attorney General is not the President's attorney. In fact, it 
should be pointed out that the President is allowed to appoint a White 
House counsel--anybody he wants--and there is no Senate confirmation. 
The reason for that is very simple: We have all believed whoever is 
President should have counsel, a lawyer, representing him and his 
interests in the White House with whom nobody else can interfere. Every 
President has done that. It makes sense the President will pick them 
and we can't question them. We can't say, you shouldn't have picked 
this person; you shouldn't have picked that person. That is the 
President's own attorney.
  The Attorney General is different. The Attorney General is different 
from anybody else in the Cabinet because the Attorney General is not a 
political officer and a political arm of the White House. The Attorney 
General represents all of us, whether rich, poor, black, white, 
Democrat, Republican, old, young, conservative, liberal, moderate. We 
are all represented by the Attorney General. That is why the Attorney 
General is given such enormous discretion--in fact, in many instances 
well beyond, whether the President likes it or not. The President can 
always fire the Attorney General, but the Attorney General has that 
discretionary power.
  When Senator Ashcroft says he will exercise that discretion in a 
manner that respects settled law, a number of areas in which he 
aggressively and vigorously opposed throughout his career, then it is 
understandable that many Members may be troubled and skeptical.
  My friend from Arizona says many Members have criticized the 
Republicans for applying too tough a standard to the nomination of Bill 
Lann Lee to head the Civil Rights Division, yet we seem to be applying 
the same standard to Senator Ashcroft. When Bill Lann Lee swore under 
oath and reiterated time and time again that he would enforce the law, 
we were told by our friends on the Republican side of the Senate, this 
wasn't good enough, we couldn't accept that--basically using the same 
words Senator Ashcroft used.
  The difference is we were prepared to vote against; they wouldn't 
allow a vote. If they didn't believe him, they chould have voted 
against him; if they were for him, they could have voted for him.
  It is different here. Here we are debating Senator Ashcroft to be 
Attorney General. We actually received the nomination in the Senate 
earlier this week. After the then-President-elect said he was going to 
nominate him, we moved forward to have a hearing and completed the 
hearing prior to the President's inauguration. That is a major 
difference. We are going to vote on him.
  Bill Lann Lee--we should point out, if people are going to raise that 
as a standard--Bill Lann Lee, a fine, dedicated person, who swore to 
uphold the law, was never even given the courtesy of a vote by the 
Senate.
  Senator Ashcroft can be asked how he interprets the oath of office. 
It is the same oath of office he will take as U.S. Attorney General. It 
is the one he took as Missouri's Governor and attorney general. That is 
why we have raised so many of the points in the hearing. They 
demonstrate an interpretation of his oath of office in the past, his 
interpretation of law that he now claims during 2 days of hearings, an 
entirely different interpretation from what he has shown for 25 years 
prior to those 2 days of hearings.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the call 
for the quorum be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The Senator from Maryland is recognized and has control of the time 
until 10:15 a.m.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, first I want to say to the former 
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee--for 17 days, from January 3 
until January 20--the very able and distinguished Senator from Vermont, 
I commend him for the hearings he held on the nomination of John 
Ashcroft to be the Attorney General of the United States. I had the 
opportunity to watch some of the hearings. I followed them in the 
press. I think the able Senator from Vermont conducted a very 
comprehensive, very careful hearing with respect to former Senator 
Ashcroft. I think he is much to be commended for doing an outstanding 
job. He obviously took very seriously the responsibilities of the 
Senate with respect to its constitutional advise and consent role.
  I thought a major effort was obviously made to hear from all sides on 
this important question. It meant going late into the evening on more 
than 1 day. But I thought it was a model of how hearings ought to be 
conducted.
  It was not pro forma. It really probed deeply into some very basic 
and fundamental questions, and I, for one, want to express my very deep 
appreciation to the Senator from Vermont for the way he planned and 
conducted those hearings. The Senate is in his debt.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I appreciate that very much coming from one 
of the intellectual giants of the Senate, my good friend from Maryland. 
I appreciate what he said. He and I are two who believe strongly in the 
Senate's role and to do all we can to carry it out. I appreciate his 
kind words.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the nomination 
of John Ashcroft to be the Attorney General of the United States. I do 
not do this lightly. I recognize, of course, the argument that is made 
that Presidents

[[Page 1219]]

ought to be able to have their Cabinet picks. I have generally in the 
past, although not always, deferred to that concept, although I think 
it obviously can be overdone, and the Senate needs to be careful not to 
be taken down the path in which we simply become rubber stamps with 
respect to nominations for the Cabinet. If that is what the Founding 
Fathers had intended, presumably they never would have put the advise 
and consent function in the Senate with respect to nominees to the 
executive branch of the Government.
  Of course, the judiciary is an entirely separate matter since it is 
an independent branch of the Government, and I think there the standard 
is much higher and much less acknowledgment or deference should be 
given to the President's judgment. But I recognize the argument that is 
made with respect to Cabinet members.
  On the other hand, I think it is very important when we consider 
Cabinet appointments, and particularly an office such as the Attorney 
General, to be very careful in judging how the very important 
responsibilities of that office will be carried out.
  I thought the Senator from Vermont made a very important contribution 
to this debate in his statement when he outlined the importance of the 
position of the Attorney General. I am not sure enough focus has been 
placed on that dimension.
  The Senator pointed out that it is a position of extraordinary 
importance; that the judgment and priorities of the person who is the 
Attorney General affect the lives of all Americans; that the Attorney 
General is the lawyer for all the people and the chief law enforcement 
officer in the country.
  The Attorney General controls a very large budget, over $20 billion. 
He directs the activities of almost 125,000 attorneys, investigators, 
Border Patrol agents, deputy marshals, correctional officers, and other 
employees in over 2,700 Department of Justice facilities throughout 
this country and in 120 foreign cities. He supervises the selection and 
actions of the 93 U.S. attorneys and their assistants; the U.S. 
marshals; supervises the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the 
Immigration and Naturalization Service; the Drug Enforcement Agency; 
the Bureau of Prisons; and many other Federal law enforcement 
components.
  Furthermore, the Attorney General evaluates judicial candidates, 
recommends judicial nominees to the President, advises the executive 
branch on the constitutionality of bills and laws, determines when the 
Federal Government will go into court, what statutes to defend in 
court, what arguments to make to the Supreme Court and other courts.
  In other words, as the Senator from Vermont pointed out, the Attorney 
General exercises a very broad discretion in terms of the judgments he 
makes and the actions he takes. Therefore, it simply does not dispose 
of the issue of how someone will perform in the office to assert that 
he will carry out the laws of the United States.
  I would hope so. It is not much of a threshold for a Cabinet nominee 
to assert that, if confirmed, he will carry out the laws of the United 
States?
  That is the minimum threshold. In the instance of the Attorney 
General, there is a broad range of activities that are subject to his 
judgment and discretion, subject to the Attorney General's sense of 
priorities, and that, of course, is what raises some very difficult 
questions with respect to this nomination.
  Senator Ashcroft has never hidden the fact that he has planted 
himself at the extreme of the political spectrum. In fact, he has taken 
pride in that fact and asserted it in the course of his political 
career. Moderation is not a word which enters into his political 
thinking. In fact, on more than one occasion, he has belittled 
moderation, as the Washington Post pointed out in an editorial just a 
few days ago.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print the editorial in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Jan. 21, 2001]

                           Wrong for Justice

       The Constitution assigns to the Senate the duty to provide 
     a president advice and consent on his nominations. Had George 
     W. Bush sought senators' advice before designating John 
     Ashcroft as his choice for attorney general, the answer, in 
     our view, would have been easy. Former senator Ashcroft is 
     the wrong man for that job. But a president is entitled to 
     wide latitude in picking his advisers, wider than in 
     selecting judges whose tenure will outlast his, and in part 
     for that reason Mr. Ashcroft seems likely to win 
     confirmation. But if Mr. Bush is entitled to the attorney 
     general he wants, he is not entitled to take pride in the 
     pick, and we fear it is one that may not serve him or the 
     country well.
       Mr. Ashcroft's views and record put him on the far right 
     edge of Republican politics. It is not just that we disagree 
     with many of his positions, on issues ranging from gun 
     control to campaign finance reform; it is that Mr. Ashcroft 
     seems in a different place from that which Mr. Bush seemed to 
     promise for his administration during his campaign and again 
     yesterday in his inaugural address. The Missouri politician's 
     support for a constitutional amendment banning abortion even 
     in cases of rape is only one example. Last week he indicated 
     in committee testimony that he would have no difficulty 
     living with Mr. Bush's more nuanced views, but if his 
     lifelong crusade against abortion has stemmed from deep 
     conviction--which we have no reason to doubt--it is hard to 
     understand how that could be so easily switched off. The same 
     is true of his intolerance of homosexuality.
       More troubling than his views have been Mr. Ashcroft's 
     inflammatory political tactics. On a range of issues--as a 
     governing philosophy, in fact--Mr. Ashcroft has explicitly 
     belittled moderation; he would now assume a job that demands 
     a sense of balance, of respect for opposing views. He helped 
     block, as senator, the confirmation of well-qualified 
     nominees whose views he found noxious; we think in particular 
     of James Hormel, whom Mr. Ashcroft deemed unfit to serve as 
     ambassador to Luxembourg because of his advocacy of gay 
     rights, and Bill Lann Lee, whom Mr. Ashcroft opposed for a 
     Justice Department position on civil rights.
       Most troubling of all is the designee's record of 
     insensitivity toward those rights, a record that raises 
     doubts about whether the Justice Department can maintain its 
     role in a Bush administration as a defender of minorities in 
     need of legal help. In 1984, Mr. Ashcroft based his 
     gubernatorial primary campaign on his zealous opposition as 
     attorney general to a voluntary desegregation plan for St. 
     Louis's public schools, boasting on the trail that his 
     tactics had risked a contempt of court citation and using 
     television attack ads to charge that his Republican primary 
     opponent was too soft in opposing desegregation. While 
     considering a run for president in 1999, Mr. Ashcroft granted 
     an interview to Southern Partisan magazine, which glorifies 
     the former Confederacy, and accepted an honorary degree from 
     Bob Jones University in South Carolina, site of a key GOP 
     primary. In testimony last week he claimed ignorance about 
     the magazine's more odious aspects, but in his interview he 
     explicitly endorsed its efforts to burnish the reputations of 
     Confederate leaders. Mr. Ashcroft also declined during his 
     confirmation hearing to repudiate his association with and 
     praise for Bob Jones (``I thank God for this institution''), 
     which maintained a ban on interracial dating at the time of 
     his visit.
       Finally, as he prepared for his reelection campaign for the 
     U.S. Senate last year, then-Sen. Ashcroft grossly distorted 
     the record of black Missouri supreme court judge Ronnie White 
     in opposing his appointment to a federal appeals court, as we 
     wrote in this space at the time. On the Senate floor, Mr. 
     Ashcroft portrayed the respected judge as a man with a 
     ``tremendous bent toward criminal activity.'' In one case, 
     Mr. White had favored a new trial for an African American 
     convicted before a judge who had made racially inflammatory 
     statements; Mr. Ashcroft claimed on the Senate floor, 
     falsely, that Judge White's complaint was that the judge in 
     question opposed affirmative action.
       Mr. Ashcroft argues that in each of these instances he was 
     stressing legitimate policy positions, such as opposition to 
     busing, support for state's rights and resistance to a soft-
     on-crime judiciary. But deliberately or not, he was also 
     playing racial politics.
       Senators traditionally have voted to confirm nominees whose 
     ideologies they reject, and that is not a tradition to be 
     lightly set aside. We opposed Mr. Ashcroft's own tendency to 
     block nominations on ideological grounds, a standard that 
     seems no more right when turned against him. Moreover, it is 
     troubling to see opponents overreach and demonize the 
     Ashcroft record, as in Sen. Edward Kennedy's distortion that 
     Mr. Ashcroft considers the U.S. government to be a tyranny. 
     By the same token, though, Mr. Ashcroft's defenders are 
     mistaken when they allege that opposition to him is simply a 
     manifestation of religious prejudice or partisan politics.
       If Mr. Ashcroft is confirmed, he, and even more the 
     president, will incur a particular obligation to staff the 
     Justice Department

[[Page 1220]]

     with people of demonstrated fairness and integrity and to 
     show that they can administer the law even-handedly. With 
     this appointment, it seems to us, Mr. Bush has taken on a 
     burden he did not need. We hope, for his sake and the 
     country's, that as attorney general Mr. Ashcroft would behave 
     as the measured and reasonable man he portrayed at last 
     week's hearings, and not with the opportunism that has marred 
     his career.

  (Mr. ALLEN assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. SARBANES. I now quote from that editorial:

       More troubling than his views have been Mr. Ashcroft's 
     inflammatory political tactics. On a range of issues--as a 
     governing philosophy, in fact--Mr. Ashcroft has explicitly 
     belittled moderation; he would now assume a job that demands 
     a sense of balance, of respect for opposing views. . . .

  Those of us who have interacted with him in the Senate have spoken 
about the intensity and the zeal of his positions as an advocate, and I 
recognize that. In fact, he has asserted it as one of his great 
political strengths and something in which he takes a great deal of 
pride.
  He has taken a number of positions which are well outside the 
mainstream of thinking--most Americans, I think, are in the middle of 
the road. Senator Ashcroft has been quoted as saying that there are 
only two things you find in the middle of the road--a moderate and a 
dead skunk.
  I think one will find most of the American people are in the middle 
of the road.
  There are extreme ideological positions here which of course, raise 
important questions. In fact, when Senator Ashcroft held up the 
nomination of Bill Lann Lee to be the head of the Civil Rights 
Division--a man of extraordinary qualification and dedication, a life 
story that ought to command the respect and admiration of all 
Americans--he argued that Lee is ``an advocate who is willing to pursue 
an objective and to carry it with the kind of intensity that belongs to 
advocacy, but not with the kind of balance that belongs to 
administration . . . his pursuit of specific objectives that are 
important to him limit his capacity to have the balanced view of making 
the judgments that will be necessary for the person who runs the [Civil 
Rights] Division.''
  That is the mental framework, the perspective that he brought to this 
very important nomination as the head of the Civil Rights Division in 
the Department of Justice. I do not intend to simply turn that standard 
and apply it to him but I do think it is indicative of an attitude and 
of a mindset that gives me great pause when I come to consider someone 
who is going to exercise the kind of discretion and broad range of 
judgments that are placed in the hands of the Attorney General of the 
United States under the statutes of our country.
  Another instance I want to point to which has given me great concern 
is what John Ashcroft did to Judge Ronnie White. As others have spoken 
at length on that, I will not go into it in any great detail, But Judge 
White was ambushed on the floor of the Senate. That, simply put, is 
what it amounted to. And that ambush was, in effect, staged by John 
Ashcroft.
  Judge White is a man who worked his way up, the classic American 
opportunity story, to become a judge on the highest court of the State 
of Missouri, an African American who broke a barrier when he went on 
that court. He was then nominated to be a Federal district judge. His 
nomination was brought out of the Judiciary Committee. The arguments 
used on the floor to ambush him were not raised in the Committee. On 
the floor the Senate was told that ``he has a tremendous bent toward 
criminal activity.'' Imagine saying that about a sitting judge of the 
State's highest court, a statement which upon examination cannot be 
sustained.
  Furthermore, Senator Ashcroft argued about White that, if confirmed 
``he will use his lifetime appointment to push law in a pro-criminal 
direction consistent with his own personal political agenda.''
  No wonder that legal columnist Stuart Taylor, wrote in an article 
that John Ashcroft's treatment of Judge White alone makes him unfit to 
be Attorney General.

       The reason is that during an important debate on a 
     sensitive matter, then-Senator Ashcroft abused the power of 
     his office by descending to demagoguery, dishonesty and 
     character assassination.

  The Baltimore Sun, in an editorial of yesterday--I ask unanimous 
consent that this editorial be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Baltimore Sun, Jan. 31, 2001]

               Ashcroft Isn't Right for Attorney General

       Few people had ever heard of racial profiling a few years 
     ago.
       But now it's a household phrase, because former Attorney 
     General Janet Reno's lawyers proved many police departments 
     were treating skin color as if it were a highway crime, 
     pulling over minority drivers for one reason--their race.
       It was an important reminder that discrimination is still 
     very much alive in America.
       During Ms. Reno's tenure, Justice Department lawyers delved 
     into problems in employment, fair housing and lending, 
     education, public accommodations and voting. They 
     investigated Americans With Disability Act violations, 
     enforced federal laws protecting access to abortion clinics.
       The point: Ms. Reno didn't merely acknowledge or respect 
     the existence of civil rights and other laws designed to 
     protect Americans. She embraced them and enforced them 
     doggedly, because discrimination still robs entire classes of 
     Americans of their most basic liberties.
       That brings us to the troubling nomination of former 
     Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft to head the Justice Department.
       His record suggests no such embrace of civil rights laws or 
     the premise of equal protection under law. Many things he has 
     said and done betray a vicious hostility toward them.
       He has blasted the judiciary (which he calls the least 
     representative branch of government) for granting ``group 
     rights'' to minorities, without regard to the group 
     discrimination that necessitates those rights.
       He has opposed public school desegregation--in one instance 
     to the point of being threatened with judicial contempt--and 
     proposed a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion in all 
     forms for any reason.
       And he has defended or stood mute in the face of other 
     institutions that attack the very premise of equal rights--
     Bob Jones University, a neo-Confederate magazine called 
     Southern Partisan, even groups with ties to the Ku Klux Klan.
       His record has inspired progressive groups around the 
     country to oppose Mr. Ashcroft's nomination. It's also why 
     some Democratic senators are threatening a filibuster to 
     block a confirmation vote.
       We share the concerns about Mr. Ashcroft's civil rights 
     record. We worry that his confirmation as attorney general 
     could mean the end of the Justice Department's important 
     efforts to level Americas uneven playing fields.
       But that alone would be insufficient for us to call for 
     derailing a Cabinet nominee. Generally, we believe presidents 
     should be given wide latitude in making their appointments.
       There is another, a more important reason to oppose Mr. 
     Ashcroft--his character.
       When Mr. Ashcroft tanked the federal judicial nomination of 
     Ronnie White, he demonstrated recklessness with truth and 
     integrity that the nation can't countenance in an attorney 
     general.
       He lied about Mr. White's stance on death penalty cases, 
     painting him as an anti-death penalty maverick when, in fact, 
     Mr. White had affirmed death sentences 71 percent of the time 
     as a Missouri Supreme Court judge.
       And to this date, Mr. Ashcroft has not owned up to what he 
     did. During his own confirmation hearings before the Senate 
     Judiciary Committee, Mr. Ashcroft defended what he did to Mr. 
     White--and denied that it represented a distortion of the 
     truth.
       Whatever the reasons for Mr. Ashcroft's actions, they speak 
     to a willingness to pursue his own agenda by any means 
     necessary, without regard to veracity of fairness.
       That makes it difficult--or near impossible--to imagine Mr. 
     Ashcroft setting a credible legal agenda from the seat of the 
     nation's highest law enforcement officer.
       It also makes it hard to believe any of what Mr. Ashcroft 
     said during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary 
     Committee, when he passionately stated he would abide by and 
     enforce laws that don't necessarily coincide with his 
     personal beliefs.
       The Senate Judiciary Committee voted yesterday to confirm 
     Mr. Ashcroft. The full Senate could vote by Thursday.
       A ``no'' vote in the full chamber--however unlikely that 
     might be--is the only course that will save the Justice 
     Department from the taint of Mr. Ashcroft's improbity.

  Mr. SARBANES. In commenting on John Ashcroft's distortion of Judge 
White's record, said:

       Whatever the reasons for Mr. Ashcroft's actions, they speak 
     to a willingness to pursue his own agenda by any means 
     necessary, without regard to veracity or fairness.

  This from an editorial in the Baltimore Sun entitled ``Ashcroft isn't 
right for attorney general.''

[[Page 1221]]

  I just want to add one other instance or example of the kind of 
approach and attitude in John Ashcroft's record that concerns me.
  When he was attorney general of the State of Missouri, charged with 
carrying out the laws, he repeatedly, in school segregation cases, was 
rebuked and overruled by the courts, both State and Federal courts, on 
very sensitive and important school segregation cases.
  In my view, he has had a consistent record of being at the extreme, 
of taking positions well outside the mainstream. And we are now faced 
with the question of whether he should be placed in a position where he 
will have broad discretion and will be making very sensitive judgments. 
It is a position that the whole country looks to to sustain its civil 
rights and its civil liberties.
  The Nation needs to have confidence that the person serving as 
Attorney General will personify fairness and justice to all our people 
all across our country.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator from Maryland has 
expired.
  Mr. SARBANES. I ask unanimous consent to speak for another 30 
seconds.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SARBANES. The New York Times, in an editorial opposing this 
nomination, made reference to President Bush's inaugural visions of ``a 
single nation of justice and opportunity.'' In my view John Ashcroft 
does not carry out that vision. I oppose his nomination. I ask 
unanimous consent that this editorial be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Jan. 23, 2001]

                    Opposing the Ashcroft Nomination

       The days after an inauguration are always marked by a 
     spirit of optimism and well-wishing. But it also has to be a 
     time for marking out fundamental principles that should come 
     into play as the nation seeks the new civic accord that 
     President George W. Bush eloquently endorsed in his inaugural 
     address. It is within this framework that the Senate should 
     consider the nomination of John Ashcroft as attorney general.
       For our part, we wish that we could simply acquiesce in a 
     confirmation that seems assured by the expectation that all 
     50 Republicans and a number of Democrats will vote to approve 
     Mr. Ashcroft. But the matter is more complex than that.
       As in our first commentary on Mr. Ashcroft's nomination, we 
     stipulate that we are convinced he is a man of sincere 
     conviction and personal rectitude. But the testimony before 
     the Judiciary Committee established that he is not a nuanced 
     or tolerant thinker about law, about constitutional tradition 
     or about the general direction of an increasingly diverse 
     American society.
       Any reasonable reading of the extensive Judiciary Committee 
     testimony shows that Mr. Ashcroft's zeal has overruled 
     prudence in cases that bear directly on issues relevant to 
     the Department of Justice. For example, the desegregation of 
     public schools, often under voluntary agreements supervised 
     by federal courts, has bipartisan roots reaching back to the 
     Eisenhower presidency. But as Missouri attorney general, Mr. 
     Ashcroft opposed a court-approved voluntary desegregation 
     plan for St. Louis and failed to come up with an alternative 
     that would have ameliorated the segregated conditions.
       Mr. Ashcroft's tactics in blocking Judge Ronnie White's 
     elevation from the Missouri Supreme Court in the federal 
     bench raise problems of another sort. Judge White had a 
     strong record of supporting capital punishment and often 
     voted with Mr. Ashcroft's appointees on the Missouri Supreme 
     Court. But on the floor of the Senate, Mr. Ashcroft advanced 
     the fabricated charge that Judge White was ``pro-criminal'' 
     and had ``a tremendous bent toward criminal activity.''
       Before the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Ashcroft persisted in 
     this demagogic attack, insisting that he was merely 
     exercising his prerogative as a senator to reach an 
     independent judgment. He was equally unpersuasive in 
     explaining his plainly homophobic opposition to the 
     confirmation of James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg. Mr. 
     Hormel is a man of sterling legal and diplomatic credentials. 
     Yet Mr. Ashcroft declared that he opposed Mr. Hormel based on 
     the ``totality'' of his record.
       As President Bush likes to say, we cannot read what is in 
     another's heart. But neither can any civic-minded participant 
     in this process fail to consider Mr. Ashcroft's history of 
     opposition and code-worded condemnation of those whose color, 
     sexual preference, religious views and attitude toward 
     abortion differ from his own.
       On the issue of abortion, Mr. Ashcroft swore that his 30-
     year history of legislative and constitutional attacks on 
     abortion rights would not lead him to oppose the ``settled 
     law'' supporting those rights. Of equal importance, he 
     testified under oath that he would not use his powers as 
     attorney general to invite a Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. 
     Wade, the ruling that guarantees reproductive freedom of 
     choice for American women.
       We welcome those statements as a solemn pledge to the 
     American people on a pivotal issue of civil liberties and 
     constitutional law. But that reassurance does not lift from 
     this page or the Senate the obligation to look at the entire 
     mosaic pieced together by the Judiciary Committee. In the 
     Senate, Mr. Ashcroft's legislative record shows a public 
     official with a history of insensitivity to minority concerns 
     and a radical propensity for offering constitutional 
     amendments that would bring that document into alignment with 
     his religious views. He even favored an amendment to make it 
     easier to revise the Constitution.
       We urge a unified Democratic vote in the Senate against 
     confirmation. If 40 or more Democrats cast a vote of 
     principle against Mr. Ashcroft's record, he and Mr. Bush will 
     be on notice that sensitivity to and regard for the beliefs 
     and rights of all Americans have to be governing realities at 
     the Department of Justice.
       We do not argue that Mr. Ashcroft is a bad man. We do 
     assert that his record makes him a regrettable appointee for 
     a new president who speaks with conviction about creating an 
     atmosphere of reassurance for all members of the American 
     family. Given this newspaper's long history of defending 
     civil liberties, reproductive freedom, gay rights and racial 
     justice, we cannot endorse Mr. Ashcroft as an appropriate 
     candidate to lead a department charged with providing justice 
     for all Americans. But recognizing that his confirmation is 
     probable, we can hope that Mr. Ashcroft's performance as 
     attorney general will be based on the president's inaugural 
     vision of ``a single nation of justice and opportunity'' 
     rather than on the general philosophy of Mr. Ashcroft's 
     public career to date.

  Mr. SARBANES. I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. I thank the Senator from Maryland.
  Under the previous order, the time until 10:30 shall be under the 
control of the majority party.
  The Chair recognizes the assistant majority leader, the Senator from 
Oklahoma, Mr. Nickles.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, thank you very much.
  Mr. President, I rise in total and complete support of John Ashcroft 
to be the next Attorney General of the United States. I do that with 
great pleasure, and with pride, because I know him. And I am not amused 
when I hear people talking about John Ashcroft in a way that is not the 
John Ashcroft I know.
  I know John Ashcroft. I have served with John Ashcroft. I have spent 
hours and hours and hours with John Ashcroft on a multitude of issues. 
I have absolute, total, and complete confidence that he is going to be 
one outstanding Attorney General of the United States.
  He is as qualified as anybody that has ever been an Attorney General. 
If you look at his qualifications, he was attorney general for the 
State of Missouri for 8 years. He was named head of the National 
Association of Attorneys General which means the other attorneys 
general all across the country elected him to be their leader.
  I have heard some of my colleagues say he is extreme. That is not the 
type of person a bipartisan group of Attorneys General would pick. He 
would not have been picked as the head of the National Association of 
Attorneys General.
  He served for 8 years as Governor of the State of Missouri. He was 
elected head of the National Governors' Association. Again, that is not 
an extremist. That is not somebody outside the mainstream. He was 
elected by his peers, by the bipartisan group of Governors, to be head 
of the National Governors' Association.
  He then was elected to the Senate which is how I really got to know 
him. Of course, I had known him by reputation as being an outstanding 
attorney general and outstanding Governor.
  He was an outstanding Senator. He served 6 years in this institution. 
I served with him in countless meetings, and I could not have come away 
knowing a person of greater intellect and integrity--a person of 
conviction, a person who can get things done, a person who is willing 
to listen to all people on

[[Page 1222]]

all sides, a person who is fair. Again, I have come to the conclusion 
that he will be an outstanding Attorney General.
  I am bothered by the opposition. I wonder where it comes from because 
maybe they are talking about a different person.
  On the issue of fairness, I have heard people say that we have done a 
good job since we have confirmed all of President Bush's nominees 
except one, and it has only taken a couple weeks.
  I go back 8 years ago, after President Clinton was elected, when 
every one of President Clinton's nominees were confirmed by voice vote, 
unanimously, by January 21, except for one, and that was for Attorney 
General. And that delay was not because Republicans were fighting the 
Attorney General nomination. It was because President Clinton ended up 
sending three names to the Senate because he had some problems with the 
first two before he submitted his final nominee. The delay was not 
because of Senate opposition. It was because he had some problems with 
the first couple of nominees he submitted.
  When we eventually got to Janet Reno, after he submitted her to the 
Senate, she was confirmed in very short order without all this rancor, 
without all this partisan nonsense. She was confirmed 98-0. She was 
every bit as liberal as John Ashcroft is conservative--every bit.
  In addition, Ms. Reno said she was going to uphold the law. I have 
heard the intensity of this debate since John Ashcroft is pro-life. 
Will he enforce the law and access to abortion clinics? John Ashcroft 
said he would. He took an oath. He said: I will uphold the law of the 
land.
  In comparison, it is interesting to note that the Beck decision is 
the law of the land.
  Attorney General Reno and the Clinton Administration did not enforce 
that decision. Also, the law of the land on campaign finance says it is 
unlawful to solicit or receive funds on Federal property. She did not 
enforce that statute in spite of the fact that her own people in the 
Justice Department said: You need to appoint a special counsel. She did 
not do it. Although it was the law of the land, she did not enforce it. 
Some of us are troubled by that. Maybe I wish I had my vote back.
  If people want to vote against John Ashcroft, they can vote against 
him, but to make these character assassinations is totally unfair. It 
certainly is not what happened 8 years ago.
  Let me touch on a couple other things. I have heard he should not be 
confirmed because he was opposed to Judge White. Well, I voted against 
Judge White, and I would vote against him again. Why? I have been in 
the Senate for 20 years almost as long as Senator Leahy, the ranking 
minority member on the committee. I don't remember a single time a 
national law enforcement group or association contacting Senators to 
say please vote no on a Federal judge.
  I remember getting a letter from the National Sheriffs' Association 
saying: Vote no on Judge White. I said: Why? Well, there was a case 
where three deputy sheriffs were murdered and a sheriff's wife was 
murdered and the defendant confessed. That case is the reason they 
wrote the letter. Of seven Missouri Supreme Court judges, Judge White 
was the sole dissenter who said: Let's review this case. There may be 
extenuating circumstances and the defendant deserves another trial.
  The sheriffs didn't feel that way. The prosecutors didn't feel that 
way. Other prosecutors, the sheriffs, and the chiefs of police in 
Missouri, said: Don't confirm Judge White. I can't remember, again, 
another nomination where you had the chiefs of police all across the 
State who know the particular judge say: Don't confirm him. That was 
something I needed to know.
  I am also troubled when some people say: You didn't confirm Judge 
White because of his race. Most of us didn't know what race he was. We 
knew law enforcement was against him, and we voted no. I make no 
apologies for that vote.
  To imply that someone is a racist because they oppose a nominee is 
wrong. Most of us opposed Judge White because he was opposed by law 
enforcement groups.
  I heard somebody say: John Ashcroft, back when he was Governor, 
opposed a court decision on desegregation. Then we find out that 
Senator Danforth, who is probably as respected a moderate as anybody, 
also opposed that decision, and Congressman Gephardt opposed that 
decision. At that time, I think Mel Carnahan, who was also an elected 
official in the State of Missouri, opposed that decision. Yet some 
people are trying to make that a reason to oppose John Ashcroft.
  John Ashcroft has had about three decades of public life. His record 
has been scrutinized to the nth degree. People are almost making up 
things to try to oppose his nomination. I think it is unwarranted. It 
is unfounded. A lot of it is below the belt and is beneath the dignity 
of the Senate. People have a right to oppose a nomination. If they want 
to oppose somebody, they can vote no, but they should not 
mischaracterize his record. I think what has happened repeatedly is 
beneath the dignity of the Senate, below the civility of the Senate.
  I urge people to be cautious when they make personal attacks against 
other individuals, and especially against a former colleague. Again, 
many of us in this body have had the privilege to know John Ashcroft. 
We know him. We know him well. I know him well. I am very proud to cast 
my vote today in support of John Ashcroft to be the next Attorney 
General. I look forward to him being the next Attorney General. I am 
confident he will represent this country extremely well in that 
capacity.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that some 
additional op-ed pieces, columns, and others be printed in the Record 
regarding this nomination.
  There being no objection, the materials were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Jan. 19, 2001]

                         Ashcroft the Activist

                         (By William Raspberry)

       Opponents of John Ashcroft's nomination to become attorney 
     general have been turning over every rock in sight, hoping to 
     find some outrageous statement, some political skeleton, some 
     evidence that he is unfit to be the nation's chief law 
     enforcement officer.
       His supporters have been doing their best to prove that the 
     nominee is technically qualified for the job and is, 
     moreover, a decent man who would enforce the law fairly.
       The whole thing seems to be missing the point. I have never 
     doubted Ashcroft's decency, never questioned his legal 
     abilities, never worried that, in a particular case, he would 
     be unfair.
       But the attorney general is not just the nation's chief 
     cop. He is also the chief influencer of our law-enforcement 
     policy.
       It is from that office that decisions are made on which 
     laws to enforce, and how vigorously; what discretion ought to 
     be exercised, and in which direction; how law-enforcement 
     resources should be deployed, and with what emphases. Bland 
     reassurances that Ashcroft would ``enforce the law fairly'' 
     aren't much help.
       To take a simple example, what does it mean to enforce 
     America's drug laws ``fairly''? Does it mean locking up 
     anybody caught with illegal drugs, as the law permits? Does 
     it mean focusing resources on major traffickers, as the law 
     also permits? Does it mean shifting resources from 
     enforcement to treatment--or the other way around? Does it 
     mean confiscating more and more assets of people found in 
     violation of the drug laws? The law allows all these things--
     allows as well the disparate sentencing for powdered and 
     ``crack'' cocaine and the well-documented racial disparity 
     that results from it.
       To promise to enforce the law without talking about which 
     policies would be emphasized or changed is to say nothing at 
     all. Absent a president with strong feelings on the matter, 
     law-enforcement policy is largely left to attorneys general 
     to decide. Some have gone against discrimination, some 
     against organized crime, some against monopolies and trusts. 
     Some have followed public sentiment, and some have gone their 
     own

[[Page 1223]]

      way. Most of the time, it hasn't mattered much. So why do so 
     many non-conservatives believe it will matter so much this 
     time?
       The answer is in Ashcroft's record of advocacy. He has 
     fought with extraordinary vigor for positions that are well 
     outside the American mainstream--on gun control, on abortion, 
     on juvenile justice, on the death penalty. I don't mean to 
     deny that his position on all these issues might be shared by 
     a significant minority. I say only that his views are 
     unusually conservative. He is, I think it fair to say, an 
     ideologue. And when you take someone who has been advocating 
     views that are well away from the political center and put 
     him in charge of law-enforcement policy, it's not enough to 
     say he'll ``enforce the law.''
       Ashcroft signaled his own understanding of this point when 
     he was asked whether he would try to undermine the 1973 Roe 
     v. Wade decision on abortion. He said that for the solicitor 
     general (who ranks under the attorney general) to petition 
     the Supreme Court to have another look at Roe would undermine 
     the Justice Department's standing before the court.
       He was, as I read his response, saying he could make the 
     attempt, though it might be impolitic to do so at this time.
       Is it unfair to oppose Ashcroft, an experienced lawyer, out 
     of fear that his personal and religious views would influence 
     his role as attorney general?
       As Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) reminded us the other day, it 
     is a question Ashcroft himself has answered. When Bill Lann 
     Lee was named by President Clinton to head the Justice 
     Department's civil rights division, Ashcroft fought to deny 
     him the job.
       He had no doubt concerning the nominee's professional 
     ability, Ashcroft said at the time, but Lee's beliefs (on 
     affirmative action) ``limit his capacity to have the balanced 
     view of making judgments that will be necessary for the 
     person who runs the division.''
       Why can't the same assessment apply to the person who will 
     run the whole department?
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Jan. 18, 2001]

                           Civil Rights 'R Us

                           (By Mary McGrory)

       Obviously, it's a case of mistaken identity.
       That man sitting before the Senate Judiciary Committee is 
     no kooky right-winger. He's not anti-black, anti-Catholic, or 
     antisemitic, as holding an honorary degree from Bob Jones 
     University might suggest. He is against abortion, he admits 
     it, but he'll observe Roe v. Wade. He's a man of law.
       Segregation? He's against it. Never mind that he fought 
     integration when he was attorney general and governor of 
     Missouri. He's a little sentimental about the Confederacy, 
     yes, but if he had been alive at the time of the Civil War, 
     he would have fought for the Union. Don't call him a partisan 
     Republican, please. When he's looking for the name of an 
     illustrious predecessor at Justice, Robert Kennedy leaps into 
     his mind. Harry Truman leads his list of prominent 
     Missourians.
       This is an erstwhile club member who thanks senators for 
     mean questions and humbly praises their candor when they 
     blast his record.
       Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) noted his sense of humor and 
     pointed out how handy it would be when the witness was 
     discussing ``the death penalty and other weighty matters'' at 
     the Justice Department.
       The makeover of John Ashcroft, a cranky extremist, for his 
     confirmation hearings is a masterpiece. His handlers have 
     created a genial healer; his haberdashery is impeccable and 
     so are his manners. Five young men with black suits and stern 
     expressions sit a row behind him and hand over notes when 
     things get dicey.
       This graduate of Yale and Harvard Law is pretty 
     sophisticated about most things, but not about hot potatoes 
     like Bob Jones U. and Southern Partisan magazine, a 
     publication to which he confided his misty-eyed appreciation 
     for the Confederacy, and one that has a profitable sideline 
     in T-shirts celebrating the assassination of Lincoln. 
     Wouldn't you know Lincoln is Ashcroft's favorite political 
     figure? He was shocked, shocked to learn about Southern 
     Partisan's excesses.
       Ashcroft the nominee was engulfed in loving friends, 
     colleagues and family with a heavy sprinkling of blacks and 
     women who were so conspicuous in the protest groups outside. 
     This John Ashcroft wouldn't dream of turning down a 
     president's choice for the Cabinet just because there were 
     differences of opinion. He's tolerant almost to a fault, and 
     his opening statement could have been the bid of an aspirant 
     to the chairmanship of the ACLU, not top gun for George W. 
     Bush's legal team.
       Opening day theatrics went like clockwork. Sen. Jean 
     Carnahan (D-Mo.), the widow of Ashcroft's opponent, Gov. Mel 
     Carnahan, brought her poignant dignity to a cameo appearance 
     as a presenter of the nominee. Her words were notably chilly. 
     She urged her colleagues to be fair, but it made a nice 
     picture.
       Committee Republicans came through with econiums to the 
     nominee's character and integrity. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-
     Iowa) fervently praised Ashcroft as someone ``who always does 
     right by the family farmer.'' Even Ashcroft's 2-year-old red-
     headed grandson, Jimmy, performed perfectly. He came onto the 
     scene wailing, but his grandfather cheerfully introduced him 
     and he fell miraculously quiet.
       On Day Two, a little celebrity caucus was brought on just 
     before the lunch break. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) gushed 
     about Ashcroft. So did former senator John Danforth (R-Mo.), 
     the patron of Clarence Thomas, Bush I's land mine Supreme 
     Court appointment. Like father, like son: Thomas was supposed 
     to flatten all objections because he is black; for Bush II, 
     Ashcroft's club membership is expected to stifle resistance.
       There were moments of discord and disbelief, but these were 
     treated like caterer's mistakes at a splashy wedding. Sen. 
     Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) challenged Ashcroft's record on 
     school desegregation and voter registration. In Missouri, 
     Ashcroft had resisted a voluntary desegregation plan and 
     vetoed a registration expansion scheme. To answer Kennedy, 
     Ashcroft read his veto messages.
       If the hearings resume next week, Ashcroft can expect a 
     kinder, gentler hand on the gavel in the person of Sen. Orrin 
     Hatch (R-Utah). Sen. Pat Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, was 
     temporary chairman but turns into a pumpkin when W. takes the 
     oath.
       There's only one thing wrong with the Ashcroft picture, the 
     figure of Judge Ronnie White, the Missouri Supreme Court 
     judge who was deprived of a seat on the federal bench by the 
     persecution of Ashcroft, who got every Republican in the 
     Senate to vote against his nomination. Ashcroft found White 
     insufficiently enthusiastic about the death penalty.
       By all accounts, Ronnie White is a distinguished member of 
     the State Supreme Court. Ashcroft misrepresented his record. 
     Ronnie White is black. Ashcroft, his allies insist, is no 
     racist. Did he slander Ronnie White for crass politics--an 
     effort to make the death sentence an issue in his campaign 
     against Carnahan? The paragon in the witness chair would not 
     do anything like that. Malice is a singularly unattractive 
     trait in an attorney general.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Jan. 18, 2001]

                      The Ashcroft Double Standard

                           (By Richard Cohen)

       A review of the record, a reading of the relevant 
     transcripts and some telephone interviews with people in the 
     know lead me to conclude that if John Ashcroft were a 
     Democrat, he would oppose his own nomination as attorney 
     general. For once, he would be right.
       The Ashcroft of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings is 
     a package of hypocrisy. His message is that his ideology, 
     hard right and intolerant, ought to be beside the point. What 
     is supposed to matter is his determination to uphold the law, 
     even the laws he believes are in contradiction to what God 
     himself intends. This is what Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) 
     calls the ``Ashcroft standard.'' It is utter nonsense.
       Take, for instance, the way Ashcroft handled the nomination 
     of James C. Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg. Hormel was a 
     man of some accomplishment as, in fact, Ashcroft had 
     firsthand reason to know. Back in 1964, Hormel was a dean at 
     the University of Chicago Law School when Ashcroft was a 
     student there. Nonetheless, Hormel was gay and not 
     particularly shy about it, either. For that reason--and that 
     reason only--Ashcroft opposed the nomination.
       This episode tells you quite a bit about Ashcroft. By any 
     measure, Hormel was certainly qualified to be ambassador to 
     this dot of a European country. As mentioned, he had been the 
     dean of a prestigious law school, had become a well-known San 
     Francisco civic leader and philanthropist and had been 
     endorsed by, among others, the Episcopal bishop of 
     California, the Right Rev. William Swing, and the former 
     everything (secretary of state, etc.), George Shultz.
       Ashcroft was unmoved. Along with Trent Lott, he considered 
     homosexuality a sin and, as with racists, polygamists, 
     misogynists and you-name-its, he could cite this or that 
     passage of the Bible to support his intolerance. Whatever the 
     reason, he would not even meet with Hormel. He would not take 
     his phone calls.
       Ashcroft explained his vote against Hormel in committee as 
     one based on the fear that Hormel was ``promoting a 
     lifestyle'' and what, when you come to think of it, this 
     might mean to embattled Luxembourg. And then he said this: 
     ``People who are nominated to represent this country have to 
     be evaluated for whether they represent the country well and 
     fairly.''
       There you have it: The Perry Mason Moment in which Ashcroft 
     blurts out the reason he is not suited to be attorney 
     general. His qualifications, as with Hormel's, are beside the 
     point. It's what he advocates that matters--whether, as he 
     would put it, he represents the country well and fairly.
       It's Ashcroft's extreme views on abortion--not late-term or 
     mid-term, but what you might call pre-term. (He would ban so-
     called morning-after pills.) It's his approach to gun 
     control, his reactionary approach to civil rights 
     legislation, his opposition to lifesaving needle exchange 
     programs or his insistence that drug treatment programs are a

[[Page 1224]]

     sheer waste of money since junkies can--to quote an old Nat 
     King Cole tune--simply ``Straighten Up and Fly Right.'' Only 
     experience teaches otherwise.
       It might be one thing if George W. Bush had won a mandate 
     for such policies. But he did not even win the popular vote. 
     In no way did the country register its support or even tacit 
     approval of the ``soft bigotry'' that Ashcroft represents. It 
     does not matter that he says he will administer laws he 
     doesn't particularly like; it matters only that he is 
     unsuited by rhetoric, ideology and political conduct to lead 
     our criminal justice system.
       If confirmed, Ashcroft would be instrumental in picking the 
     next generation of federal judges. Bush has already declared 
     himself a committed delegator who will CEO the federal 
     government from the Oval Office. (He has a Harvard MBA, don't 
     forget.) If that's the case--and a man who was among the last 
     to know his vice presidential nominee had suffered a heart 
     attack clearly delegates to a fare-thee-well--then the job of 
     picking federal judges will be left to Ashcroft. The federal 
     bench is going to look like the faculty lounge at Bob Jones 
     University.
       John Ashcroft must be laughing to himself. He knows that if 
     the shoe were on the other foot, he would never confirm an 
     attorney general who had views so antiethical to his own. 
     Maybe he'd find something in the Bible or, as he did with the 
     judicial nomination of Ronnie White, distort the record, but 
     he would be true to his beliefs. His opponents should be true 
     to theirs.
                                  ____


               [From the Chicago Tribune, Jan. 16, 2001]

               The Confederacy's Favorite Cabinet Nominee

                        (By Derrick Z. Jackson)

       If the Senate Judiciary Committee straightens its backbone 
     rather than slap the back of attorney general nominee John 
     Ashcroft, we may get to see why his hallucinations about Bull 
     Run will make him a bull in the china closet of civil rights.
       Any serious line of questioning should start like this:
       Sen. Ashcroft, you praised Southern Partisan magazine for 
     ``defending'' patriots like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, 
     and Jefferson Davis: ``Traditionalists must do more. I've got 
     to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this 
     respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were 
     giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and 
     their honor to some perverted agenda.''
       Let's explore what you meant by that.
       Senator, why are you, in the year 2001, praising Davis, the 
     president of the Confederacy, who personally italicized the 
     portions of the Constitution that preserved slavery? Why do 
     you laud a man who said white superiority over African-
     Americans was ``stamped from the beginning, marked in decree 
     and prophecy''?
       Why do you love a man whose vice president, Alexander 
     Stephens, said the ``cornerstone'' of the Confederacy ``rests 
     upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white 
     man; that slavery, subordination, to the superior race, is 
     his natural and moral condition''?
       Why do you complain about Davis being maligned by 
     historians when Davis tried to rewrite history? He said on 
     the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1860 that ``Negroes formed 
     but a small part of people of the southern states.''
       For the record, in 1860 black people were 55 percent of the 
     population in Davis' home state of Mississippi, 58 percent of 
     South Carolina, and between a third to a half of the people 
     of most of the rest of the slave states.
       Now, Senator, I am reading this sentence again, where you 
     say we've all got to stand up or else we'll be taught that 
     Davis, Lee, and Jackson were subscribing their ``sacred 
     fortunes'' to some ``perverted'' agenda. That sounds a lot 
     like what Davis said in his first Confederate inaugural 
     address when he said the North ``would pervert that most 
     sacred of all trusts.''
       Senator, since we know that that sacred trust was slavery, 
     what is it that you are trying to say? Does that mean you 
     will not investigate charges of black voter fraud in Florida?
       Senator, let's move on to Lee. You say today's history 
     books ``make no mention of Lee's military genius!'' Why is 
     that so important to you when the same Lee called Mexicans 
     ``idle worthless and vicious''? Why do you praise a man who 
     said as he exterminated Indians: ``The whole race is 
     extremely uninteresting . . . they are not worth it.'' Where 
     can we find Lee's genius in saying that killing Indians was 
     ``the only corrective they understand and the only way in 
     which they can be taught to keep within their own limits''?
       Why is Lee so good when he justified the ripping of black 
     people out of Africa to enslave them by saying, ``The blacks 
     are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, 
     socially, and physically. The painful discipline they are 
     undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race''?
       Why does Lee need to be revered when his troops, like other 
     Confederate divisions, hated free black people so much that 
     they sometimes massacred defeated black Union soldiers even 
     though they had thrown down their arms in surrender?
       Senator, may I read you a passage from the new book, ``The 
     Making of Robert E. Lee,'' by Michael Fellman? A Confederate 
     major wrote in 1864 after one battle, ``such slaughter I have 
     not witnessed upon any battlefield anywhere.
       ``Their men were principally Negroes and we shot them down 
     until we got near enough and then run them through with the 
     bayonet . . . We was not very particular whether we captured 
     or killed them, the only thing we did not like to be pestered 
     burying the heathens.''
       Senator, why do you praise Lee when, after the Civil War, 
     he actively resisted Reconstruction? Lee said white people 
     are ``inflexibly opposed to any system of laws that would 
     place the political power of the country in the hands of the 
     Negro race.'' He said black people lacked the ``intelligence 
     . . . necessary to make them safe repositories of political 
     power.''
       Senator, thank you, but in light of your reverence for such 
     men, we'll be asking President-elect George W. Bush to 
     appoint a less antebellum attorney general. As you leave, 
     stop by the front desk. The clerk will arrange for you to 
     participate in a Civil War re-enactment in the slave state of 
     your choice. Please send us a photo of your experience. We 
     would love to see who you dressed up as. We're betting 
     against Frederick Douglass.

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I don't want to leave the impression in 
this Chamber that there is some kind of unanimity of law enforcement in 
opposition to Judge Ronnie White. In fact, a very substantial number in 
law enforcement in Missouri wrote to us, wrote to the Members of the 
Senate, and said they strongly supported Judge Ronnie White. One of the 
leading law enforcement organizations wrote to us and said they were 
distressed that he was not confirmed on the basis that somehow he might 
be pro-criminal.
  The record showed that he voted with appointees by then-Governor 
Ashcroft something like 95 or 96 percent of the time in death penalty 
cases.
  Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. LEAHY. Of course.
  Mr. NICKLES. Just for a point of clarification, is the Senator 
referring to the Fraternal Order of Police sending a letter in support 
of Judge White?
  Mr. LEAHY. Yes.
  Mr. NICKLES. Wasn't that letter sent after Judge White was defeated?
  Mr. LEAHY. Indeed, it was.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print additional editorials 
and material regarding the nomination in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                             [From Newsday]

               Ashcroft's Rights Do Not Include Being AG

                           (By Clarence Page)

       Now that George W. Bush has nominated Sen. John Ashcroft 
     (R-Mo.) to be attorney general, it would not be inappropriate 
     for Ashcroft's fellow senators to treat him as fairly as he 
     treated Judge Ronnie White.
       In other words, will they tar him as an extremist? Will 
     they roast him, not for his personal qualifications, which is 
     what confirmation hearings are supposed to be about, but for 
     his personal beliefs? Will they paint him as an extremist and 
     distort his record without giving him an opportunity to 
     respond? That was how Ashcroft handled President Bill 
     Clinton's nomination of Judge Ronnie White to the federal 
     bench in 1999. Civil rights groups are particularly angry 
     that Ashcroft led the successful party-line fight to defeat 
     White.
       Ashcroft painted White's opinions as ``the most anti-death-
     penalty judge on the Missouri Supreme Court'' and said that 
     his record was ``outside the court's mainstream.'' Actually, 
     whether you agree with him or not, White can hardly be called 
     ``pro-criminal'' or ``outside the mainstream.'' Court records 
     show that White voted to uphold death sentences in 41 out of 
     59 capital cases that came before him on the state supreme 
     court. In most of the other cases, he voted with the majority 
     of his fellow justices, including those appointed by Ashcroft 
     when he was Missouri governor.
       In fact, three Ashcroft appointees voted to reverse the 
     death penalty a greater number of times than White did.
       On the Senate floor, Ashcroft singled out two of the only 
     three death-penalty cases in which White was the sole 
     dissenter. In one of them, White questioned whether the 
     defendant's right to effective counsel had been violated. 
     Whether you agree or not, you don't have to be ``pro-
     criminal'' to value the rights of the accused, especially in 
     a death-penalty case. In the other, White questioned whether 
     the lower court judge, Earl L. Blackwell of Jefferson County 
     was biased and should have recused himself in a trial that 
     began the morning after Blackwell issued a controversial 
     campaign statement.
       Blackwell, explaining in a press release why he had 
     switched to the Republican

[[Page 1225]]

     Party, said, ``The truth is that I switched to the Republican 
     Party, said, ``The truth is that I have noticed in recent 
     years that the Democrat Party places far too much emphasis on 
     representing minorities such as homosexuals, people who don't 
     want to work and people with a skin that's any color but 
     white.'' Again, the judge has the right to express his views, 
     but you don't have to be an extremist to understand why 
     White, the first African American to sit on the Missouri 
     Supreme Court, might question that judge's even-handedness.
       When Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) asked White if he opposed 
     the death penalty, White said, ``Absolutely not.'' But White 
     did not get a chance to rebut Ashcroft's charges because 
     Ashcroft did not raise them until months after White's 
     confirmation hearings. This tactic was characterized as 
     ``delay and ambush'' by Elliot Mincberg, vice president and 
     legal director of People for the American Way, one of several 
     liberal groups that oppose Ashcroft's confirmation.
       To charge that Ashcroft is a bigot, as some have done, 
     misses the point. He has a right to express strong views 
     without being called names. He has a right to oppose 
     affirmative action and gay rights, as he has done in the past 
     with other nominations. He has a right to favor a ``right to 
     life'' until someone has been sentenced to death.
       But he does not have a right to be attorney general. 
     Therefore, it is not surprising that the four pillars of the 
     liberal establishment--civil rights, abortion rights, 
     organized labor and environmental protection--have begun to 
     rally their opposition to his confirmation.
       Why, they ask, should this country have an attorney general 
     who opposes sensitive laws that he is supposed to enforce? 
     Ashcroft will have a chance to answer that question in his 
     confirmation hearings. The Senate will let him offer his side 
     of the story. That's more than Ashcroft gave Ronnie White.
                                  ____


              [From the Des Moines Register, Jan. 5, 2001]

                          Uneasy With Ashcroft

     Will he enforce the laws even-handedly--even those he 
         disagrees with?
       The record of Senator John Ashcroft inspires no confidence 
     that he'll enforce the laws of the land impartially as 
     attorney general of the United States.
       The Missourian, who lost his re-election bid to the Senate 
     this fall, vigorously opposes abortion rights under virtually 
     all circumstances. So would he fully enforce federal laws 
     safeguarding abortion clinics from violence and harassment? 
     Will he actively protect the legal right of women to choose 
     even though he personally thinks women should not have that 
     right?
       Ashcroft is President-elect George W. Bush's nominee to be 
     the next attorney general. As head of the Justice Department, 
     he would be in charge of overseeing the FBI, enforcing 
     antitrust laws, litigating on the government's behalf and 
     enforcing the civil rights of citizens, among other things.
       How interested in assuring civil rights is Ashcroft? He's 
     been criticized for his opposition to the elevation of 
     Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie White, an African-
     American, to the federal bench. Ashcroft called White ``pro-
     criminal,'' even though White had voted to uphold the death 
     penalty in 41 of 59 cases--said to be about the same share as 
     that of the judges whom Ashcroft appointed when he was 
     governor. Consider that along with Ashcroft's failed fight to 
     keep David Satcher, a respected black physician, from 
     becoming surgeon general because Satcher is against a ban on 
     late-term abortions. And in 1999, Ashcroft accepted an 
     honorary degree from Bob Jones University in South Carolina, 
     which at that time prohibited interracial dating.
       Bush Cabinet selections such as moderate African-American 
     Colin Powell for secretary of state don't soften the hard-
     line insensitivity Ashcroft presents. He is not a leader who 
     brings people together.
       Those who share Ashcroft's religious conservatism are no 
     doubt heartened by the expectation that their points of view 
     will be well represented. But all Americans should at least 
     be comfortable that the next attorney general will be fair-
     minded and even-handed as the nation's chief law-enforcement 
     officer.
       Before confirming him, the Senate should expect a pledge 
     from Ashcroft that he will enforce the laws of the land as 
     they exist, not as he would like them to be.
       The Missourian vigorously opposes abortion rights under 
     virtually all circumstances. So would he fully enforce laws 
     safeguarding clinics?
                                  ____


                [From the New York Times, Jan. 4, 2001]

                           Fairness for Whom?

                            (By Bob Herbert)

       We keep hearing that George W. Bush's choice for attorney 
     general, John Ashcroft, is a man of honor, a stalwart when it 
     comes to matters of principle and integrity. Former Senate 
     colleagues are frequently quoted as saying that while they 
     disagree with his ultra-conservative political views, they 
     consider him to be a trustworthy, fair-minded individual.
       Spare me. The allegedly upright Mr. Ashcroft revealed 
     himself as a shameless and deliberately destructive liar in 
     1999 when, as the junior senator from Missouri, he launched a 
     malacious attack against a genuinely honorable man, Ronnie 
     White, who had been nominated by the president to a federal 
     district court seat.
       Justice White was a distinguished jurist and the first 
     black member of the Missouri Supreme Court. Mr. Ashcroft, a 
     right-wing zealot with a fondness for the old Confederacy, 
     could not abide his elevation to the federal bench. But there 
     were no legitimate reasons to oppose Justice White's 
     confirmation by the Senate. So Mr. Ashcroft reached into the 
     gutter and scooped up a few handfuls of calumny to throw at 
     the nominee.
       He declared that Justice White was soft on crime. Worse, he 
     was ``pro-criminal.'' The judge's record, according to Mr. 
     Ashcroft, showed ``a tremendous bent toward criminal 
     activity.'' As for the death penalty, that all-important 
     criminal justice barometer--well, in Mr. Ashcroft's view, the 
     nominee was beyond the pale. He said that Ronnie White was 
     the most anti-death-penalty judge on the State Supreme Court.
       Listen closely: None of this was true. But by the time Mr. 
     Ashcroft finished painting his false portrait of Justice 
     White, his republican colleagues had fallen into line and 
     were distributing a memo that described the nominee as 
     ``notorious among law enforcement officers in his home state 
     of Missouri for his decisions favoring murderers, rapists, 
     drug dealers and other heinous criminals.''
       This was a sick episode. Justice White was no friend of 
     criminals. And a look at the record would have shown that 
     even when it came to the death penalty he voted to uphold 
     capital sentences in 70 percent of the cases that came before 
     him. There were times when he voted (mostly with the 
     majority) to reverse capital sentences because of procedural 
     errors. But as my colleague Anthony Lewis pointed out last 
     week, judges appointed by Mr. Ashcroft when he was governor 
     of Missouri voted as often as Justice White--in some cases, 
     more often--to reverse capital sentences.
       But the damage was done. Mr. Ashcroft's unscrupulous, mean-
     spirited attack succeeded in derailing the nomination of a 
     fine judge. The confirmation of Justice White was defeated by 
     Republicans in a party-line vote. The Alliance for Justice, 
     which monitors judicial selections, noted that it was the 
     first time in almost half a century that the full Senate had 
     voted down a district court nominee.
       The Times, in an editorial, said the Republicans had 
     reached ``a new low'' in the judicial confirmation process. 
     The headline on the editorial was ``A Sad Judicial Mugging.''
       So much for the fair-minded Mr. Ashcroft.
       A Republican senator, who asked not to be identified, told 
     me this week that he could not justify Mr. Ashcroft's 
     treatment of Ronnie White, but that it would be wrong to 
     suggest that the attack on his nomination was racially 
     motivated.
       That may or may not be so. It would be easier to believe if 
     Mr. Ashcroft did not have such a dismal record on matters 
     related to race. As Missouri's attorney general he was 
     opposed to even a voluntary plan to desegregate schools in 
     metropolitan St. Louis. Just last year he accepted an 
     honorary degree from Bob Jones University, school that is 
     notorious for its racial and religious intolerance. And a 
     couple of years ago, Mr. Ashcroft gave a friendly interview 
     to Southern Partisan magazine, praising it for helping to 
     ``set the record straight'' about issues related to the Civil 
     War.
       Southern Partisan just happens to be a rabid neo-
     Confederate publication that ritually denounces Abraham 
     Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and other champions of 
     freedom and tolerance in America.
       This is the man George W. Bush has carefully chosen to be 
     the highest law enforcement officer in the nation. That 
     silence that you hear is the sound of black Americans not 
     celebrating.
                                  ____


                   [From Time Magazine, Jan. 2, 2001]

                      The Wrong Choice for Justice

                           (By Jack E. White)

       What was president-elect George W. Bush thinking when he 
     selected John Ashcroft as his nominee for Attorney General? 
     That since he was designating three superbly qualified 
     African Americans for high-level positions--Secretary of 
     State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza 
     Rice and Secretary of Education Rod Paige--blacks would 
     somehow overlook Ashcroft's horrendous record on race? Or 
     that it was compassionately conservative for Bush to hire a 
     man who had just lost re-election as Missouri's junior U.S. 
     Senator to a dead man? (Governor Mel Carnahan, who died in a 
     plane crash during the campaign, won the seat, and his widow 
     is serving in his place.) It certainly couldn't have been 
     that appointing Ashcroft would enhance Bush's image as a 
     uniter, not a divider. Ashcroft's positions on civil rights 
     issues are about as sensitive as a hammer blow to the head.
       It's puzzling, because the nomination of an extremist like 
     Ashcroft is so needlessly out of synch with the rest of 
     Bush's utterly respectable Cabinet choices. He could have 
     satisfied the right by selecting Oklahoma Governor Frank 
     Keating, who is as tough on crime as Ashcroft, yet far less 
     controversial. But as we are about to find out, Ashcroft

[[Page 1226]]

     won't be confirmed without a fight. The angriest coalition of 
     liberal, civil rights and feminist organizations Washington 
     has seen since the 1987 battle over Supreme Court nominee 
     Robert Bork is lining up to oppose him. The opposition's 
     leaders concede that as a former member of the club, Ashcroft 
     would normally sail through the Senate. But since Ashcroft 
     has been on the wrong side of every social issue from 
     affirmative action to hate-crimes legislation and women's 
     rights, there may be a chance to peel off enough moderate 
     Republicans to make him the first Cabinet appointee to be 
     bounced since 1989, when John Tower lost his chance to be 
     Secretary of Defense for President Bush the Elder.
       Pushing Ashcroft through will cost the younger Bush 
     considerable political capital, and might be only the start 
     of his headaches. As a leading G.O.P. strategist puts it, 
     ``The risk will be that about every six months, [Ashcroft] 
     will do something that he thinks is clever or politically 
     interesting, and they will open their papers at the White 
     House and say, ``What the hell is he doing?'' Certainly there 
     is plenty in Ashcroft's record to unsettle fair-minded 
     conservatives--and to raise questions about the sincerity of 
     Bush's attempts to reach out to blacks. As the St. Louis 
     Post-Dispatch noted in an editorial in December, Ashcroft 
     ``has built a career out of opposing school desegregation in 
     St. Louis and opposing African Americans for public office.''
       When he served as Missouri's attorney general in the 1980s, 
     Ashcroft persuaded the Reagan Administration to oppose 
     school-desegregation plans in St. Louis, then used the issue 
     to win the governorship in 1984. Since his election to the 
     Senate in 1994. Ashcroft has consistently appealed to the 
     right wing of his party, even when his approach risked 
     appearing racist. He fought unsuccessfully against the 
     confirmation of David Satcher, a distinguished black 
     physician, as surgeon general, because Satcher proposes a ban 
     on late-term abortions. In 1998 Ashcroft told the neo-
     segregationist magazine Southern Partisan that Confederate 
     war heroes were ``patriots.'' In 1999 he accepted an honorary 
     degree from South Carolina's Bob Jones University, which 
     hadn't yet dropped its ridiculous ban on interracial dating.
       Most disturbing of all, as Ashcroft was gearing up a short-
     lived campaign for the White House last year, he verbally 
     attacked Missouri Supreme Court Justice Ronnie White, an 
     African American whom Bill Clinton has appointed to the 
     federal bench, for supposedly being ``pro-criminal'' and soft 
     on capital punishment. The charge was outright slander. White 
     had voted to uphold the death sentence in 41 of the 59 cases 
     that came before him, roughly the same proportion as 
     Ashcroft's court appointees when he was Governor. No wonder 
     Gordon Baum, leader of white supremacist Council of 
     Conservative Citizens, in 1999 included Ashcroft along with 
     Pat Buchanan in the circle of politicians he'd like to see in 
     the White House.
       Does Baum know something Bush doesn't? Can Ashcroft be 
     trusted to oversee the investigation of alleged voting-rights 
     abuses in Florida, which many blacks believe disenfranchised 
     them and delivered the presidency unfairly to Bush? This is 
     one nomination that, pardon the pun, should be consigned to 
     the Ashcroft of history.

  Mr. LEAHY. The point is, the Fraternal Order of Police were dismayed 
that he was defeated on the basis that he might be anti-law 
enforcement. They pointed out that he was pro-law enforcement. The 
concern has been expressed and was expressed at the hearing for Judge 
White, concern that prompted an apology from some Republicans who had 
voted against Judge White, regarding the way he was basically 
ambushed--that is the expression that has been used--on the Senate 
floor. We have never had a case where a judicial nomination has been 
voted out of the Judiciary Committee, brought to the Senate floor, and 
then defeated--in this case, on a party-line vote.
  What happened and what has created a great deal of concern is that 
here is a person who came from very humble beginnings, worked his way 
through law school, was considered a highly respected member of the bar 
in Missouri, became a justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, and 
then, sort of at the pinnacle of his legal career, was nominated to be 
a Federal district judge. He went through the hearings in the Judiciary 
Committee, was voted out by the Judiciary Committee by a lopsided 
margin. It comes to the floor and then, in a party-line vote, is 
defeated.
  As my friend from Oklahoma mentioned, the Missouri State Lodge of the 
Fraternal Order of Police indicated that on behalf of 4,500 law 
enforcement officers they viewed Justice White's record as a jurist as 
one whose record on the death penalty was far more supportive of the 
rights of victims than of the rights of criminals. The president of the 
Missouri police chiefs association described Justice White as an 
upright, fine individual. They had a hard time seeing that he was 
against law enforcement and never thought of him as pro-criminal.
  One can debate a judge's position. Basically, as I said, he voted on 
death penalty cases 95 percent of the time with justices appointed by 
then-Governor Ashcroft. What bothered me and bothered a lot of 
Senators--and bothered Republican Senators who publicly then apologized 
to Judge White--was the fact that he was basically ambushed on the 
Senate floor.
  There was testimony before our Judiciary Committee that it was not 
his vote on one particular case but, rather, the fact that he was made 
a political pawn in a Senate race. That is wrong.
  We should keep the judiciary out of politics. He was dragged in and 
his reputation was unnecessarily besmirched. His career was damaged. 
All he had worked for all of his life was for naught, and it was done 
for political purposes.
  That is what most people objected to. That was certainly what the 
letters indicated that I have received--including concern expressed by 
people who told me, first and foremost, they voted for then-Governor 
Bush to become President Bush but felt that this was wrong.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, just to give a little different flavor, I 
don't like the word ``ambush'' applied to Judge White.
  To clarify again a couple of things that happened, the reason why 
this Senator voted against him--and I would guess the reason why the 
majority of Republicans voted against him--was because we received a 
letter from the National Sheriffs' Association that said: Vote against 
Judge White. They had good reasons expressed in that letter. In this 
principal case that we are talking about, three deputy sheriffs were 
murdered, and the wife of a sheriff was murdered, and Judge White was 
the sole judge saying: Let's retry it; let's have a new hearing. The 
Missouri law enforcement community was very opposed to that.
  In addition to that, several Chiefs of Police contacted us and 
suggested we vote no, and to review this dissent. We also heard from 
prosecutors about this case and other cases who said vote no on Judge 
White.
  The Missouri Fraternal Order of Police sent us a letter in support of 
Judge White, but they sent that letter after the vote.
  Why did we have the vote at that time? Our colleagues on the Democrat 
side were clamoring for a vote. Why did people vote for Judge White in 
committee and then vote against him on the floor? The letters of law 
enforcement did not come up until after he was approved by the 
Judiciary Committee. I will grant my colleague from Vermont that later 
there were other letters from law enforcement.
  The letter from the National Sheriffs' Association was not before the 
Judiciary Committee. I wish they would have written it before the 
Judiciary Committee had voted, but they did it afterwards when it was 
the pending nomination before the floor of the Senate.
  One other clarification I wish to repeat is that I am just very 
troubled by the allegation that he was opposed because of his race 
because most people did not know what his race was. I sat through a 
meeting where these letters by law enforcement were discussed, and 
Judge White's race was never mentioned. I know that to be the case. I 
sat in that meeting. That wasn't an issue. It didn't come up.
  What came up was law enforcement opposition and at that time the only 
law enforcement letters we saw were in opposition. If we had the letter 
from the FOP saying confirm him, maybe that would have made a 
difference, and probably would have. Maybe if the sheriffs' 
organizations would have gotten their letter out before the Judiciary 
Committee vote, it might have made a big difference in the Judiciary 
Committee. Timing is important. But it is important to remember that 
the reason why we had the vote on the floor at that time, I believe, 
was because our colleagues on the Democrat side were clamoring for a 
vote.

[[Page 1227]]

  I don't like the word ``ambush.'' Maybe that vote should have been 
delayed so we could have had a little more discussion of why these law 
enforcement groups were against him. Maybe some might have been for him 
given more time to enter into that debate. But that didn't happen, and 
I wasn't involved in scheduling the vote.
  But my point is I didn't feel as though he was ambushed. I do say 
what was unique was that during my 20 years in the Congress, this is 
the only time I can remember national law enforcement agencies coming 
up and saying vote against this person, which is what they did in 
contacting Members of the Senate. I think that is the reason Judge 
White went down.
  Be that as it may, there are lots of other issues dealing with John 
Ashcroft.
  Again, I think John Ashcroft is one outstanding individual who is 
more than qualified to be Attorney General of the United States. And I 
am absolutely confident that when he is confirmed, we will look back 
and say he is an outstanding Attorney General for the United States of 
America.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, just so the Record is straight on law 
enforcement officers, it is interesting that there was no contact of 
anybody on this side. Senator Ashcroft said the reason he stopped Judge 
White was because of that urging of law enforcement groups. But then 
subsequently, press reports and then the reports by the law enforcement 
officials themselves and Senator Ashcroft's own testimony at his 
hearing contradicted that; that he had instigated and orchestrated the 
groups' opposition to Ronnie White. I am not suggesting Ronnie White 
was defeated because he was an African American, but it would be hard 
for anybody not to know he was insofar as that was mentioned at great 
length in the debate the day before and the debate just before the vote 
by those who were on the floor debating it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time until 10:45 
a.m. shall be under the control of the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. 
Lieberman. He is so recognized.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I have known John Ashcroft for almost 40 years, as a 
college classmate, a fellow State attorney general and a colleague in 
the Senate. Throughout that time, our views on important issues very 
often have diverged, but I have never had reason to doubt his sincerity 
or his integrity. It strikes me in this regard that the often-noted and 
sometimes derided notion that Senators judge their colleagues more 
leniently than outsiders misses an important point. It is not that we 
reflexively defer to our former colleagues. It is instead that we as 
human beings find it tremendously difficult to pass judgment on those 
we have worked with and know well. And it is because I have known 
Senator Ashcroft for so long that I find the conclusion I have 
reached--which is to oppose his nomination--so awkward and 
uncomfortable. But that is where my review of the record regarding this 
nomination and my understanding of the Senate's responsibility under 
the advice and consent clause lead me.
  Throughout my tenure in the Senate, I have voted on hundreds of 
Presidential nominees. In each case, I have adhered to a broadly 
deferential standard of review. As I explained in my first speech on 
the Senate floor--in which I offered my reasons for opposing the 
nomination of John Tower to serve as Defense Secretary--the history of 
the debates at the Constitution Convention make clear that the 
President is entitled to the benefit of the doubt in his appointments. 
The question, I concluded, I should ask myself in considering nominees 
is not whether I would have chosen the nominee, but rather whether the 
President's choice is acceptable for the job in question.
  That does not mean that the Senate should serve merely as a rubber 
stamp. Were that the case, the Framers would have given the Senate no 
role in the appointments process. Instead, the Senate's constitutional 
advice and consent mandate obliges it to serve as a check on the 
President's appointment power. As I put it in my statement on Senator 
Tower's nomination, I believe this requires Senators to consider 
several things: First, the knowledge, experience, and qualifications of 
the nominee for the position; second, the nominee's judgment, as 
evidenced by his conduct and decisions, as well as his personal 
behavior; and third, the nominee's ethics, including current or prior 
conflicts of interest. In unusual circumstances, Senators can also 
consider fundamental and potentially irreconcilable policy differences 
between the nominee and the mission of the agency he or she is to 
serve.
  On a few occasions during my 12 years in the Senate, I have 
determined that the views of certain nominees--on both ends of the 
political spectrum--fell sufficiently outside the mainstream to compel 
me to oppose their nominations. In each case, I had serious doubts 
about whether they could credibly carry out the duties of the office to 
which they were nominated. In 1993, for example, I voted against 
President Clinton's nominee to head the National Endowment for the 
Humanities because I believed that his active support of so-called 
college speech codes cast doubt on his ability to administer the NEH 
appropriately. That same year, I expressed opposition to another of 
President Clinton's nominees--his choice to head the Justice 
Department's Civil Rights Division--because I feared that her writings 
and speeches demonstrated an ideological vision of what the voting 
rights laws should be that was so far from what they had been that I 
was reluctant to put her in charge of enforcing those laws, regardless 
of whether or not she had pledged to abide by the law as it existed.
  In 1999, just last year, I concluded that a nominee to the Federal 
Election Commission held views on the nation's campaign finance laws 
that were so inconsistent with the FEC's mission that I could not in 
good conscience vote to place him in a position of authority over that 
agency. And just this week I reached a similar conclusion with respect 
to President Bush's nominee to lead the Interior Department.
  In short, although I believe that the Constitution casts the Senate's 
advice role as a limited one and counsels Senators to be cautious in 
withholding their consent, I nevertheless have opposed nominees where 
their policy positions, statements, or actions made me question whether 
they would be able to administer the agency they had been nominated to 
head in a credible and adequate manner. Regretfully, I conclude that 
such a determination is again warranted on this critically important 
nomination--because of the record of the nominee and because of the 
position for which he has been nominated.
  The Justice Department occupies a unique role in the structure of the 
Federal Government. As its mission statement declares, the Justice 
Department exists ``to ensure fair and impartial administration of 
justice for all Americans.'' No other agency every day and every hour 
makes decisions about how and on whom to bring to bear the force of the 
criminal and civil law, making countless decisions not only on whom to 
prosecute or sue, but also on how harsh a sentence to seek and even on 
who--in the name of the people of the United States--should face death 
as punishment for their actions. No other agency has such broad and 
sweeping authority to take away our citizens' life, liberty or 
property--an authority we as Americans accept because no other agency 
has more consistently sought to exemplify the rule of law and the 
abiding American aspiration of equal justice for all. No other official 
of the United States government bears as great a responsibility as does 
the Attorney General for protecting and enforcing the rights of the 
vulnerable and disenfranchised in our society. If we are to sustain 
popular trust in the law, which is so important for ``domestic 
tranquility,'' it is absolutely critical that the Department which is 
charged with enforcing the law not only be administered according to 
law, but also that the great majority of

[[Page 1228]]

Americans have confidence in the fairness and integrity of its 
leadership.
  Unfortunately, Senator Ashcroft's past statements and actions have 
given understandable suspicions to many citizens--particularly some of 
those whose rights are most at risk--that he will not lead the 
Department in a manner that will protect them. Others have detailed his 
record so extensively that I need not do so again. Suffice it to say 
that on issues ranging from civil rights to privacy rights, Senator 
Ashcroft has repeatedly taken positions considerably outside of the 
mainstream of American thinking.
  When given the opportunity to consider laws as Missouri's Governor 
and enforce them as Missouri's attorney general, he took actions that 
today raise serious questions among many in this country about his 
commitment to equal justice and opportunity. In speeches and articles, 
he has spoken and written words that have particularly led many in the 
African-American community to question his sensitivity to their rights 
and concerns. And, when acting on nominees in the Senate--including 
Judge Ronnie White and Ambassador James Hormel--he has made statements 
that have raised sincere questions in the minds of many about whether 
he will make fair and appropriate decisions regarding groups of 
Americans that have frequently been victimized by discrimination.
  The cumulative weight of these words and deeds leaves me with 
sufficient doubt about Senator Ashcroft's ability to appropriately 
carry out--and be perceived as appropriately carrying out--the manifold 
duties of Attorney General, so that I have decided not to support his 
nomination.
  Before yielding the floor, I would like to comment on one more issue 
that has come up during the consideration of this particular 
nomination: Senator Ashcroft's religious beliefs and his public 
profession of his faith. During the time since the President nominated 
Senator Ashcroft, many have argued--too often privately--that Senator 
Ashcroft's deeply held beliefs and his religious practices somehow cast 
suspicion on his ability to serve as Attorney General. I emphatically 
reject--and am confident my colleagues will reject--any suggestion that 
Senator Ashcroft's religious beliefs bear in any manner at all on the 
consideration of his nomination.
  All across this nation, tens of millions of Americans of a multitude 
of faiths daily and weekly make professions of faith privately and 
publically that elevate, order and give purpose to their lives. To 
suggest that all of us who believe with a steadfast faith in a Supreme 
Being as the Universe's ultimate Sovereign have an obligation to mute 
one of our faith's central elements if we wish to serve in government 
is not to advance the separation of church and state, but instead to 
erect a barrier to public service by Americans of faith which is 
totally unacceptable. To consider the private religious practices of a 
nominee or a candidate for public office which are different from 
most--whether Pentecostal Christian, Orthodox Jewish, Shia Muslim, or 
any other faith--as a limitation on that person's capacity to hold that 
office is profoundly unfair. It is wrong.
  Nowhere in the first amendment or anywhere else in the Constitution 
or in the jurisprudence surrounding them is there any suggestion that 
of all the values systems that those in public life are permitted to 
draw upon to inform their views and their actions, religion stands 
alone as being off limits. Let us remember that the Constitution and 
the Bill of Rights were drafted by people of faith whose belief in the 
Creator was the direct source of the rights with which they endowed us 
and which we enjoy to this day. To suggest that one may justify his or 
her views on abortion, environmental protection, or any other issue 
with reference to a system of secular values, but not by drawing upon a 
tradition of religious beliefs, seems to me to be at odds not only with 
the freedom of religion and expression enshrined in the first 
amendment, but also with the daily experience of the vast majority of 
our fellow citizens. The first amendment tells us that we may not 
impose our religion on others. It most decidedly does not say that we 
may not ourselves use our religion to inform our public and private 
statements and positions.
  It is Senator Ashcroft's record, not his religion, that we should 
judge. I admire Senator Ashcroft for his private and public adherence 
to his faith, but for the reasons stated above, based on his record, I 
will vote against his confirmation.
  Mr. LEAHY. I ask unanimous consent that I be able to continue for 1 
minute.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, while the distinguished Senator from 
Connecticut is on the floor, I appreciate the last part of his remarks. 
I will speak more about it later today.
  I am concerned that there has somehow been this strawman put up as 
though there is a religious test. As I and others stated at the 
beginning of these hearings and as I stated on the floor, one of the 
things I admire most about Senator Ashcroft is his commitment to his 
family, his commitment to his religion. As practically everybody has 
pointed out, whether we are for or against him as Attorney General, 
these are two things we have admired the most: his commitment to his 
family and his commitment to his religion. There should be no doubt 
about that in the public's mind.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes that under the previous 
order the time until 11 a.m. shall be under the control of the majority 
party. We have gone over by 10 minutes, so the Senator is recognized 
for 10 minutes. If the Senator's remarks are 15 minutes in length, he 
can ask unanimous consent for that time.
  The Senator from Alabama is recognized.
  Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, thank you for your courtesy.
  Over the past 8 years, I believe our Justice Department has 
floundered dangerously, challenging our most basic understanding of the 
rule of law and starkly reminding us in America of the awesome power of 
the Federal Government and the dangers that the exercise of that power 
can present to a free society such as ours. I believe public confidence 
in our system of justice has been seriously damaged in the past 8 years 
and that our country has suffered as a consequence.
  I believe it is time to restore the public trust, and I do not 
believe there is a better qualified or more honorable man to do that 
job than Senator John Ashcroft, our former colleague. Indeed, he is one 
of the most, if not the most, experienced nominees for Attorney General 
we have ever had in our history. He is one of the best educated, most 
experienced nominees for Attorney General I have seen in my 23 years in 
Washington.
  What is most outstanding about Senator Ashcroft is not his resume, 
although we could go on and on and on about that. It is not his strong 
record of leadership as the attorney general of his State of Missouri 
and his leadership as the Governor of the State of Missouri. No, it is 
not his impressive legislative accomplishments in the Senate.
  I submit what is most outstanding about John Ashcroft is his 
character. It is the strength of that character that makes him so well 
suited to be Attorney General of the United States. His principles and 
his integrity underscore the kind of leadership the Justice Department 
so desperately needs and the American people so rightly deserve in an 
Attorney General.
  John Ashcroft's conscience and his conviction ensure rather than 
question his commitment to enforce the laws of our land fairly and 
impartially. I do not believe even for a moment that Senator Ashcroft's 
most fierce opponents truly believe he will not endeavor to enforce our 
laws faithfully. While his conservatism threatens them, their real 
fear, I believe, is that he will enforce the law without prejudice, 
that he will be uniform in his application. This is because their 
greatest ideal, I believe, is to use the Justice Department as a tool 
to advance the political and social agenda of America by selectively 
enforcing laws with which they agree and ignoring those with which they 
disagree.

[[Page 1229]]

  John Ashcroft, I submit to you, is not going to do that. As a man who 
respects the rule of law and the importance of the public trust in our 
justice system, I have no doubt that he will enforce the laws of the 
land rather than creatively interpret them, twist or contort them to 
match his personal beliefs.
  I am pleased to support the nomination of John Ashcroft to be the 
Attorney General of the United States. I sincerely believe he will 
honor the office of Attorney General and he will restore integrity to 
the Justice Department. I look forward to his confirmation later today 
by the Senate and his future service to the United States of America.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska, Mr. Murkowski.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I trust the debate is moving along 
toward a successful vote here in the not too distant future.
  I rise today to emphatically support the nomination of John Ashcroft 
to become the next Attorney General of the United States. He has served 
our Nation with distinction and with honor. I do not take lightly my 
senatorial duties to review the qualifications of any nominee for this 
office. The Attorney General is the Nation's highest law enforcement 
officer, and without the strong and faithful execution of the laws we 
pass, representative democracy shall fail. Our laws become mere words. 
It is with this understanding, and a high personal regard for the 
office, that I support John Ashcroft's nomination.
  It has become clear to me and others, after following the unusually 
personal debate on this nomination, that no one can question John's 
qualifications to perform the duties of this job. In fact, I believe 
one would be hard-pressed to find a more qualified, experienced 
nominee. John has served with distinction, as has been noted and 
stated, as attorney general, as Governor, and as U.S. Senator in this 
body. Not once during his long and successful tenure as a public 
servant has he ever failed to uphold an oath of office.
  Think about that. We have had some experience in debating the merits 
of the oath of office and just what it means. I think to all of us it 
is a very sacred oath, a very meaningful oath, and one that should be 
reflected on. John has never failed to uphold his oath of office in any 
capacity. I know John Ashcroft does not plan on starting now.
  Unfortunately, this nomination process has done a grave disservice to 
a very decent and honorable man. We as legislators often disagree on 
policy. I am sure I have disagreed with John on some issues. But our 
actions as legislators are guided by our own personal convictions. We 
must vote our conscience and represent the people who graced us with 
their votes.
  But we are not here to elect a legislator. Rather, we deal with the 
office of the Attorney General of the United States. This is not John 
Ashcroft the Senator but, rather, John Ashcroft the Attorney General. 
Like all of us who have served in different roles throughout our lives, 
I know John fully understands his position in government.
  John will faithfully enforce our Nation's laws without a hint of 
personal bias or a hidden agenda. He will uphold the rule of law for 
all Americans, enforcing laws as they are enacted by the Congress. At 
the end of the day and at the end of this debate, my vote will be cast 
in favor of this nomination for one simple reason: John Ashcroft is a 
man of his word. I have yet to hear anyone demonstrate in this debate 
that he is not.
  John has clearly stated numerous times that he will not allow his 
personal beliefs to interfere with his ability to enforce the law. I 
believe him. Throughout his long and successful career, he has never, 
never given anyone a reason to doubt his word. I thank John for his 
willingness to further serve our Nation and his willingness to 
withstand the numerous unjustified personal attacks that have been made 
on him. My thanks will be expressed in my vote in favor of the 
nomination. I encourage my fellow Senators to do the same.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time until 11:10 
a.m. shall be under the control of the Senator from North Carolina, Mr. 
Edwards. The Senator from North Carolina is recognized.
  Mr. EDWARDS. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, the Nation is emerging from an extraordinarily close 
election that has left much of the country feeling divided. It is a 
time when all of us have an enormous responsibility to unite our 
country. In order to unite this country, we have to turn to leaders who 
inspire confidence and bring us together. In my judgment, with the 
nomination of Senator Ashcroft, President Bush has fallen short of that 
goal.
  Why has he fallen short? Because in a time when our country 
desperately needs a unifier, the President has nominated a man to be 
the chief law enforcement officer of the country--the people's lawyer, 
the lawyer for all the people--who has a long record of divisive and 
inflammatory rhetoric which results in him being viewed as a polarizing 
figure.
  There are some folks who argue that his positions are just the result 
of very deeply held beliefs. Some people believe his positions are 
extreme. In the end, the one thing that is certain is that he is, in 
the view of many Americans, a polarizing and divisive figure.
  Senator Ashcroft opposed the nomination of Ronnie White, a very well-
respected African American justice on the Missouri Supreme Court, for 
what at least appeared to be simply political reasons. In opposing the 
nomination of Justice White, Senator Ashcroft used words and language 
that not only were inflammatory but showed a fundamental disrespect for 
a man who had lifted himself out of poverty, worked his entire life to 
become a justice on the Missouri Supreme Court, and committed his 
professional life to the fair administration of justice.
  It is not unfair for some Americans to question whether Senator 
Ashcroft can adequately represent their public interests given his 
history.
  Some argue that Senator Ashcroft, in fact, has given his word that he 
will follow the law and enforce the law. The problem is that the 
realities of the Justice Department are that there are daily choices 
the Attorney General will be required to make. He will be required to 
decide which laws will be vigorously enforced and which laws will be 
defended from attack.
  Senator Ashcroft has spoken very eloquently about the reasons he 
pursued certain cases while he was attorney general of Missouri and why 
he challenged certain laws and legislation. Whether you agree or 
disagree with what Senator Ashcroft did as attorney general of 
Missouri, you can count on the fact that those same situations can and 
will arise, in fact, during the term of the next Attorney General of 
the United States.
  The Attorney General will be required to make daily decisions, 
discretionary decisions, that are critical to the lives of very many 
Americans. Again, it is not unfair for some Americans to question 
whether Senator Ashcroft, even keeping his word, which he has given us, 
will make decisions that will adequately represent and protect them 
given his prior statements and actions. The question is whether he 
will, in fact, be all the people's lawyer, as he has a responsibility 
to be.
  The post of the Attorney General is very different from other Cabinet 
posts. The Attorney General advises the President about the 
constitutionality of the legislation he is being asked to sign. He 
makes recommendations to the President about judicial nominations. As I 
already discussed and as others have discussed, Senator Ashcroft's 
history does not support the notion that he will recommend candidates 
for nomination to the Federal bench solely on the basis of their 
qualifications and abilities to serve.
  It is critical to note that the Attorney General is not the 
President's lawyer, he is the people's lawyer. He represents our Nation 
before the U.S. Supreme Court. Senator Ashcroft once called a U.S. 
Supreme Court decision ``illegitimate.'' Again, such statements show a 
fundamental disrespect for the rule of law which we believe is so 
critical in this country. When our U.S. Supreme Court speaks, whether 
we agree

[[Page 1230]]

or disagree with them, they are the final word and they are the law of 
the land.
  It is very important to recognize also that the vast majority of the 
decisions that will be made by our Attorney General over the next four 
years will be difficult judgments made behind closed doors and under 
the national radar screen, outside the television cameras. When so many 
Americans believe that when the doors are closed and the lights and the 
cameras are off, Senator Ashcroft will not protect their interests, our 
responsibility is to do what is best for the country. The people have 
to believe that the Attorney General is the people's lawyer and that he 
will serve all Americans.
  Some of Senator Ashcroft's supporters suggest that the opposition to 
him is about his religion and about his faith. I want to make clear 
that I think strong faith is an enormous asset in any public servant. 
In fact, personal touchstones of faith and morality are critical to 
providing leadership and governance in this country.
  I served with Senator Ashcroft in the Senate. I know him, and I 
absolutely believe his strong faith is deep and sincere. I applaud and, 
in many ways, share the strength of his religious conviction and his 
religious faith. It is certainly not because of his faith that I reach 
the decision I do today. In fact, it is in spite of it.
  In conclusion, at a time when our Nation desperately needs unifying 
leaders, Senator Ashcroft is the wrong man for the wrong job at the 
wrong time. So it is with deep regret that I will not be able to 
support the nomination of Senator Ashcroft.
  I yield back the remainder of my time.
  (Disturbance in the galleries.)
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Allard). There will be order in the 
galleries.
  The Chair recognizes the Senator from Texas, Mr. Gramm.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I have to say that as I listen to this 
organized campaign against John Ashcroft, I sometimes wonder if there 
is not an effort to make the love of traditional values a hate crime in 
America.
  Fifty years ago, a person who set out to engage in public service 
might unfairly be criticized for not being a member of a church or not 
professing religion, but who would have thought 50 years later that a 
man would be mocked for holding a deeply held faith? Who would have 
thought 50 years later that calling on the Almighty to help you fulfill 
trusts that were given to you by your State and your Nation would be 
held up to ridicule?
  The plain truth is, we may have ``In God We Trust'' on our coins, but 
we do not have it in our heart.
  As I have looked at this caricature that has been created, that his 
opponents claim is John Ashcroft, this is not the man I know. This is 
not the man with whom I have worked for 6 years. This is not the man 
whose son attended college with my son. This is not the man who, in 
public or private in 6 years, I never heard say a mean word against 
anyone. This is not the man who, remarkably, in my opinion, can express 
himself without ever using profanity.
  I hear him criticized for opposing judges with no good reason, and 
yet in the case of Judge White he was opposed by 77 sheriffs in the 
State. He was opposed by both Senators, and he was opposed and rejected 
by the Senate on an up-or-down vote.
  In short, when I look at all of these criticisms, and when I weigh 
them against the bottom line facts, there is no basis for them at all.
  I thank Jon Kyl and I thank Jeff Sessions for the excellent job they 
have done in putting out the facts.
  A person who fits the ugly caricature that has been presented here in 
the Senate and around the country could not be the John Ashcroft I 
know.
  A person who fit that ugly caricature could not have been elected 
Attorney General twice in the State of Missouri. A person fitting that 
caricature would not have been chosen by his fellow attorneys general 
to be the president of the National Association of Attorneys General. A 
person who fit the ugly caricature presented here could not have been 
elected Governor of Missouri twice, and would not and could not have 
been chosen by his 49 fellow Governors to head the National Governors' 
Association.
  I know George Bush. I have a pretty good idea what is in his mind and 
in his heart. And a person who met this ugly caricature that we hear 
could not and would not have been nominated by George Bush. The plain 
truth is that John Ashcroft is probably the most qualified person ever 
to be appointed Attorney General.
  I want to conclude with this thought. I am beginning to wonder if 
this was all an effort to smear and defeat John Ashcroft or whether 
this was an effort to cow John Ashcroft; whether this is an effort by 
those who lost the election, who hold views that are alien to the views 
of most Americans, to try, through smearing John Ashcroft, to cow him 
in office, and in the process prevent him from carrying out George 
Bush's agenda. I want to say I vote for John Ashcroft with the happy 
knowledge that that effort will fail.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time does not expire until 
11:15. Does he wish to yield that time?
  Mr. GRAMM. I yield that time to my dear colleague.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I rise today in support of John Ashcroft. 
It will not take me long to make my point.
  Although I represent the State of Montana, I was raised in the State 
of Missouri on a small farm, and I understand some of the mindset that 
is in that State. My mother and father both were active in the 
Democratic Party. Mom was in the State Democratic Committee in that 
State and was county chairman. She often wondered what happened to me, 
but I tried to explain to her about it one time: When you see the 
outside world, maybe your philosophy changes just a little bit.
  I have heard nothing but those who would have reservations about John 
Ashcroft enforcing the law. It would seem to me, after two terms as 
attorney general in the State of Missouri, two terms as Governor, and 6 
years in the U.S. Senate, it would surface somewhere that he would not.
  I thank Senator Kyl and Senator Sessions for the research they have 
done. I have talked to some of the law enforcement people in Missouri 
and have done some research in my own home State of Montana. What I 
have found is that we couldn't have chosen a better man to represent 
this country in the halls of the Attorney General. I shall support 
him--and support him wholeheartedly--because we have a man of substance 
and of fiber.
  I thank my good friend from Texas for yielding some of his time. I 
also thank my good friend, Senator Wellstone from Minnesota, for 
yielding some of his time he has reserved and allowing me to go at this 
time.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time until 11:45 
shall be under the control of the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. 
Wellstone.
  The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I have voted for any number of the 
President's nominees to serve in our Cabinet, even though I am 100-
percent sure I am going to be in disagreement with them on some of the 
really major public policy questions that face our country.
  It is very rare that a Cabinet nominee is defeated by the Senate. It 
does not happen very often. There is a presumption that the President 
should be allowed to choose his or her people to serve in the Cabinet. 
In addition, I do know Senator Ashcroft. I respect his religious 
convictions. I have had personal interaction with him, which I have 
enjoyed. And if he is confirmed, I will wish him the very best because 
he will be Attorney General for our country.
  But there is also a set of other questions that are important to me 
as a Senator from Minnesota. To be the Attorney General, and to head 
the Justice Department, is to be the lawyer for all the people in the 
country.

[[Page 1231]]

  I had a great man who worked for me here who passed away from cancer 
this last year, Mike Epstein. When I first met Mike, he said to me: I 
have been in Washington for 30 years, but I still believe in changing 
the world. I hope we can work together.
  He came to the Justice Department and worked with Bobby Kennedy, 
dealing with enforcement of the Civil Rights Act; the Justice 
Department, dealing with enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
  Colleagues, in Minnesota, when we were celebrating the life of Dr. 
Martin Luther King, Jr., I was speaking at a gathering. I didn't expect 
the reaction. I remember a book Dr. King wrote called ``Where Do We Go 
From Here: Chaos or Community?'' I had this cadence where I said: We 
have a long ways to go. And in the cadence, I said: We have a long ways 
to go when people of color are pulled along the side of the road on 
their way to vote because they are people of color.
  I could not believe the reaction of the African American community, 
the Latino community, the Southeast Asian community, and the Native 
American community. They know that what happened in Florida was wrong. 
Something went wrong there. And they are very mindful of voting rights, 
the hate crimes legislation, the Violence Against Women Act, the Church 
Arson Act.
  The Attorney General is the person who advises the President on 
judicial appointments, whether it be to a Federal district court, the 
court of appeals, or the U.S. Supreme Court. I do not honestly believe 
John Ashcroft is the right person to be Attorney General for our 
country.
  Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--I just heard 
this as I came in, getting ready to speak--have labeled disagreement 
with this choice and questions that have been raised--I am going to 
raise civil rights questions; this is my background; this is my life--
as a personal attack on John Ashcroft. I don't see it that way.
  In fact, I said to John on the telephone: I never will savage you. I 
don't believe in it. I hate it. Some of my colleagues have spoken on 
the floor with a considerable amount of eloquence about that.
  But my baptism to politics was the civil rights movement. I learned 
from men and women of color--many of them young, and many of them old, 
and hardly any of them famous, though they should be famous--about the 
importance of civil rights and human rights. This is the framework I 
bring to the Senate. This is why I am going to vote no.
  I don't agree with some of the positions Senator Ashcroft took as a 
Senator, but that is not the basis of my vote.
  Some of his views on abortion, to make abortion a crime even in the 
case of rape and incest, are extreme and harsh. I once said in a TV 
debate that John Ashcroft gives me cognitive dissonance because I like 
him as a person and I don't understand how a person whom I like can 
hold, sometimes, such harsh views. I don't agree with his position on 
abortion. I don't agree with some of his other positions.
  It is not his voting record. Without trying to be self-righteous on 
the floor of the Senate or melodramatic, I have spent hardly any time 
with groups or organizations except at the beginning when people came 
by and I said: Please give me everything to read and let me think this 
through myself.
  I am troubled by the statements made by John Ashcroft and his role in 
blatantly distorting the record of Judge White. I am going to say 
``blatantly distorting the record'' because I think that is what 
happened. The evidence is compelling. We heard from Judge White about 
that as well. To call him a pro-criminal judge on the basis of the 
decisions he had rendered--I don't want to say it was 
``extraordinary''--crossed a line. I have a right as a Senator to say, 
if John Ashcroft, as Attorney General, with the key position he would 
be playing in terms of judges and the Federal judiciary, is going to 
use the same standard and the same methodology he used to oppose 
Justice White, then a lot of justices, a lot of men and women who could 
serve our country in the Federal judiciary, will never make it. That is 
one of the reasons I oppose this nomination.
  The question was put to John Ashcroft in the committee about his 
opposition to Jim Hormel: Did he oppose Jim Hormel because he was gay? 
Senator Ashcroft stated that ``the totality of circumstances suggested 
that Mr. Hormel would not make a good ambassador.'' What made up that 
totality? Senator Ashcroft didn't attend Mr. Hormel's hearings. He 
refused to meet with Mr. Hormel. He never returned any of Mr. Hormel's 
calls. And in the hearing, John Ashcroft suggested or stated that Mr. 
Hormel ``recruited him'' to the University of Chicago School of Law. 
But Mr. Hormel says: I don't ever recall recruiting anybody for the 
University of Chicago. And he can't remember a single conversation with 
John Ashcroft over the past 30-some years.
  John Ashcroft also told us, in the battle over the nomination, that 
Mr. Hormel, by simply being an openly gay man who is also a civic 
leader, has ``been a leader in promoting a lifestyle, and the kind of 
leadership he has exhibited there is likely to be offensive to 
individuals in the setting in which he is assigned,'' suggesting that 
Luxembourg, as a Catholic nation, would find it difficult to receive 
him.
  The evidence is that Luxembourg openly embraced him. He was a great 
Ambassador. It is also a questionable assumption, because it is a 
Catholic country, that Catholics would not embrace a person, would not 
judge a person by the content of his character.
  I want to be clear that as a Senator, as I think about who should 
head the Justice Department and who should be the Attorney General and 
I think about my own life, when I was teaching, I used to insist that 
students answer the following question: Why do you think about politics 
the way you think about politics? Then I never graded their answer. I 
just wanted them to think about what really shaped their viewpoint. I 
have been thinking a lot about that in relation to this debate. There 
are sets of facts and different versions of truth and all the rest.
  What shapes my viewpoint? I am a product of the civil rights 
movement. I am not a hero like John Lewis, but I helped. Men and women 
in the civil rights movement were my teachers. This is a civil rights 
vote. This is a human rights vote.
  I know that John and his supporters will say: Judge us by what is in 
our heart. For people across the country, people of color, people who 
have a different sexual orientation, they judge you by your actions. 
They judge you by what you have said. And I believe the Justice 
Department has to be all about justice. I don't think John Ashcroft is 
the right person to head this Justice Department.
  It is not any one thing. I will be honest. I will admit a bias. I 
don't have a great feeling for Bob Jones University. As long as we are 
talking about race, they banned dating between students of different 
races and continue to have a policy that states that gay alumni--yes, 
former students--should be arrested for trespassing when they step foot 
on the grounds of their alma mater. I don't have a good feeling for 
this school. I am speaking within the civil rights and human rights 
framework. I don't know why John Ashcroft accepted an honorary degree. 
I don't know why you would want to honor such a school. I don't know 
why you wouldn't want to renounce all of those policies.
  It is just one piece of evidence, and I know John has made it clear 
that he disagrees with some of what the school is about.
  I don't understand the interview with Southern Partisan magazine. I 
find it to be bizarre. This is a magazine which goes out of its way not 
to promote racial reconciliation or healing but just the opposite. I 
don't understand John Ashcroft's animus toward Ron White or toward Jim 
Hormel. If it wasn't that, then it probably was some form of political 
opportunism. I certainly don't understand the association with Southern 
Partisan magazine and not even being willing to renounce this magazine 
or acknowledge his error in doing the interview at the recent hearings.

[[Page 1232]]

  I don't know why he refused to sign the pledge that his office would 
not discriminate in its employment practices based on sexual 
orientation. It is his first amendment right. The point is, we are 
talking about somebody to head up the Justice Department.
  I consider this to be a civil rights vote and a human rights vote. 
That is why I am voting no. Despite what John Ashcroft said during the 
hearings about his limited role in the State of Missouri on any number 
of legal cases dealing with civil rights and human rights, I will 
discuss his role in opposing what was a voluntary desegregation order. 
I will highlight the testimony of one who knows John Ashcroft's record 
in this area best, Bill Taylor. I will highlight Bill Taylor's 
testimony because I consider him to be a giant. I am proud to say he is 
one of my teachers. He is a real hero. He is one of those who joined 
Thurgood Marshall's team in the years just after the Brown decision to 
work for full implementation of Brown v. Board of Education.
  Over two decades, he served as the lead counsel for a class of 
parents and students in the St. Louis case. During the most active part 
of that time, John Ashcroft was attorney general and Governor of 
Missouri. Listen to the words of Bill Taylor in his testimony before 
the Judiciary Committee:

       I have thought seriously since this nomination about 
     whether Mr. Ashcroft's conduct in the St. Louis case was 
     simply that of a lawyer vigorously defending the interests of 
     the State or whether some of his actions went over the line 
     of strong advocacy and reflect on his qualifications to serve 
     as Attorney General of the United States. My conclusion is 
     that the latter is the case. I believe that in his tenure as 
     Attorney General, Mr. Ashcroft used the court system to delay 
     and obstruct the development and implementation of a 
     desegregation settlement that was agreed to by all major 
     parties except the State.
       In so doing, he sought to prevent measures that were a 
     major step toward racial reconciliation in an area where 
     there has been much conflict, and to thwart a remedy that 
     ultimately proved to be a very important vehicle for 
     educational progress. John Ashcroft massively resisted this 
     desegregation effort.

  I think the most troubling aspect of the Missouri school 
desegregation issue, to me, is that John Ashcroft consistently used his 
fervent opposition to the Federal judge's desegregation order as a 
political issue in the campaign.
  I want to be real clear about it because I am not going to get into 
any pitched, acrimonious battle with anyone here on the floor of the 
Senate. But the fact that I talk about his resistance to this voluntary 
desegregation case is that I am so troubled by the ways in which he 
went after Justice White; the fact that I talk about Bob Jones 
University and Southern Partisan magazine is not because I am 
interested in any personal attack. I already said I don't understand 
how it is that a person I like so much personally can hold such harsh 
views. But he is the lawyer for all the people of the United States of 
America if he is Attorney General. He will head up the Justice 
Department. This is the Voting Rights Act. This is the Civil Rights 
Act. This is the Violence Against Women Act. This is all about whether 
or not you can have a man or a woman--in this particular case a man--
who will head the Justice Department and will lead our country down the 
path of racial reconciliation.
  We have a huge divide in the United State of America on the central 
question of race. We have a question before us as to whether or not we 
have a man who can lead the Justice Department for justice for all 
people and who will be a leader when it comes to basic human rights 
questions. He is not the right choice.
  I thank the Judiciary Committee, Democrats and Republicans alike, for 
the way in which they conducted the hearings.
  I say to John Ashcroft, whom I am sure is viewing this debate and 
listening to all of us, that if confirmed, again, I wish him the very 
best. He will be the Attorney General for all of us in our country. But 
I also would like to say, to me, this is, in my 10\1/2\ years in the 
Senate, as close as I can remember coming to a basic civil rights vote, 
a basic human rights vote, and I cannot support John Ashcroft to be 
Attorney General and to head the Justice Department; not on the basis 
of everything I believe in about civil rights and human rights; not on 
the basis of the younger years of my life; not on the basis of being a 
United States Senator from the State of Minnesota who had Senator 
Hubert Humphrey, who gave one of the greatest civil rights speeches 
ever at the 1948 Democratic Party Convention.
  I am in a State which is a civil rights State. I am from a State 
which is a human rights State which passed an ordnance that said there 
shall be no discrimination against people, not only by race but sexual 
orientation, for housing, employment--across the board. Therefore, I 
vote the tradition of my State; I vote my own life's work ``no'' to 
this nomination.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Leahy's 
15 minutes be given to Senator Kennedy, the Senator from Massachusetts; 
7\1/2\ minutes to the Senator from Indiana, Mr. Bayh; and 7\1/2\ 
minutes to the Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer; and that Senator 
Daschle's time from 12:45 until 1:15 be given to Senator Leahy.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask that the following editorials and 
materials regarding the nomination of John Ashcroft be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Courier-Journal, Dec. 28, 2000]

                         The Joker in the Deck

       We know that George W. Bush would have to appease the 
     Republican Party's ultra-right-wing.
       By nominating John Ashcroft for attorney general, Bush has 
     delivered, big-time. The booby prize goes to the civil rights 
     and human rights communities.
       Though Ashcroft's a Missouri Republican--he was attorney 
     general, governor and most recently U.S. Senator--he's a good 
     ol' boy in the old South tradition.
       ``With the possible exception of Sen. Jesse Helms, I do not 
     believe anyone in the United States Senate has a more abysmal 
     record on civil rights and civil liberties'' said Ralph Neas, 
     president of People for the American Way.
       Why, Ashcroft was given an honorary degree by the notorious 
     Bob Jones University, the South Carolina school that until 
     recently banned interracial dating.
       Meanwhile, graycoats still fighting the Civil War (see Tony 
     Horowitz's book, Confederates in the Attic) must have been 
     glad to read the interview in which Ashcroft delivered a 
     strong defense of Southern ``patriots'' like Robert E. Lee, 
     Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson.
       Does he defend slavery, too?
       It's scary that this sort of rhetoric fell so recently from 
     the lips of one who, as attorney general, will oversee the 
     FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Services, the Drug 
     Enforcement Administration and federal prisons, prosecutors 
     and marshals. The attorney general is often instrumental in 
     the selection of federal judges as well.
       Wade Henderson, director of the Leadership Conference on 
     Civil Rights, likened Ashcroft's nomination as ``political 
     three card monte.''
       That's a card game often played by hustlers who scoop up 
     the dollars of suckers convinced that they can pick the right 
     card from among three that the cardsharks shuffle around.
       In other words, while many were starting to warm up to Bush 
     with his nominations of retired Gen. Colin Powell and 
     Condoleezza Rice as secretary of State and national security 
     advisor, respectively, the real joker in the deck is 
     Ashcroft.
       ``The issue is not whether a senator will vote against 
     Ashcroft's nomination,'' Henderson said. ``The question is 
     whether the Judiciary Committee will conduct a full and fair 
     confirmation hearing that will allow Ashcroft's complete 
     record and philosophy to be presented to the American 
     people.''
       There already are clues as to what Ashcroft's tenure at the 
     Justice Department could mean.
       For example, he opposed President Clinton's nomination of 
     Bill Lann Lee to head the Justice Department's civil rights 
     division. He opposed, unsuccessfully, David Satcher's 
     appointment as Surgeon General.
       In fact, Ashcroft opposed several of President Clinton's 
     black nominees, especially for the federal bench. He spent 
     two years killing Ronnie White's reputation and elevation to 
     federal judge.
       Ashcroft claimed that White, the first black on Missouri's 
     Supreme Court, was more committed to criminals than to 
     victims. In fact, in more than 40 of 58 death penalty cases, 
     White upheld the sentence, and

[[Page 1233]]

     when he didn't he often was joined by judges Ashcroft 
     appointed when he was governor.
       We also know that Ashcroft is committed to the death 
     penalty, and is aggressively opposed to the right of choice 
     in women's decisions about pregnancy.
       Kate Michelman, of the National Abortion and Reproductive 
     Rights Action League, notes that Ashcroft voted 42 times in 
     the Senate to restrict abortion, and he co-sponsored a bill 
     to outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.
       Ashcroft often received 100 percent ratings from the 
     American Conservative Union, and zero, or near zero, ratings 
     from civil rights and environmental groups. ``Bush is playing 
     a very sophisticated game of politics and manipulation,'' 
     said Henderson, who noted that, in the federal hierarchy, the 
     attorney general is the crown jewel of the social justice 
     movement.
       By nominating Ashcroft, Henderson said, the President-elect 
     is showing contempt, ``not unlike the contempt his father 
     showed in an equally important position, the U.S. Supreme 
     Court.'' Under the guise of bringing the best and the 
     brightest, he named Clarence Thomas.
       ``It's a cruel mockery that speaks volumes about that 
     administration's character and integrity,'' Henderson said.
       With Ashcroft's history, unless there's an epiphany, I 
     wonder whether he will be able to transcend his own beliefs 
     to enforce the laws of the land--whether he likes them or 
     not.
       With Ashcroft, George W. Bush confirms many African 
     Americans' worst fears. Moreover, Bush must be listening to 
     those who say he mustn't betray an important GOP base in the 
     name of bipartisanship.
       Just forget about healing wounds; act like you've got a 
     mandate, Dubya.
       For this liberal, the best thing about John Ashcroft's 
     nomination is its potential to bring even more blacks and 
     minorities to the polls in 2002.
                                  ____


          [From the St. Louis Post-Dispatcher, Dec. 24, 2000]

                       Mr. Ashcroft and Equality

       There is a case to be made that the Senate should confirm 
     John Ashcroft as attorney general. He has a distinguished 
     record of honest and effective public service. He is a smart 
     lawyer who was a strong state attorney general. And the 
     Senate should give some deference to a new president's 
     Cabinet choices.
       In addition, Mr. Ashcroft has the institutional tradition 
     of senatorial courtesy on his side. He served in the club and 
     fellow senators will be reluctant to treat him badly.
       Nevertheless, the Senate should set aside its sensibilities 
     and scrutinize Mr. Ashcroft's record as it relates to the job 
     of attorney general. In particular, it should investigate Mr. 
     Ashcroft's opposition to civil rights, women's rights, 
     abortion rights and to judicial nominees with whom he 
     disagrees.
       The Ashcroft choice is at odds with President-elect George 
     W. Bush's image as a uniter. When Mr. Ashcroft was running 
     for president in 1998, he said: ``There are voices in the 
     Republican Party today who preach pragmatism, who champion 
     conciliation, who counsel compromise. I stand here today to 
     reject those deceptions.'' So much for compassionate 
     conservatism and bipartisanship.
       It would be an exaggeration to say Mr. Ashcroft is a 
     racist. It would be an exaggeration to say Mr. Ashcroft is a 
     racist. He recalls that his father, a noted evangelist, urged 
     him as a boy to read Richard Wright's account of the trials 
     of a black youth in ``Black Boy.'' Africans, whom his father 
     had met on church travels, stayed at the family home in 
     segregated Springfield, Mo.
       But Mr. Ashcroft has built a career out of opposing school 
     desegregation in St. Louis and opposing African-Americans for 
     public office. As attorney general in the 1980s he lobbied 
     White House counselor Edwin Meese III to help persuade the 
     Reagan Justice Department to switch sides and oppose a broad 
     school desegregation plan in St. Louis. He eventually 
     succeeded.
       In the early stages of negotiating the voluntary city-
     county school desegregation plan in St. Louis, Mr. Ashcroft's 
     office had actually taken a positive role. But Mr. Ashcroft 
     ended up opposing the plan because the state had to pay for 
     it and because he considered it an example of judicial 
     excess. He told the U.S. Supreme Court that he had ``little 
     doubt'' that ``a minority'' would be treated better in court 
     than the state.
       Mr. Ashcroft's really inexcusable act was riding his 
     opposition to the St. Louis desegregation plan into the 
     governor's mansion. His so-called ``McFlip'' TV ad, accusing 
     Gene McNary of flip-flopping on desegregation, is credited 
     with helping win a tough GOP primary in 1984.
       Mr. Ashcroft's U.S. Senate record deepens the concern about 
     his attitude toward African-Americans. He tried 
     unsuccessfully to block the appointment of Surgeon General 
     Dr. David Satcher. He scuttled the judicial nomination of 
     Ronnie White of St. Louis. He wrote, in a South Carolina 
     magazine, that, ``traditionalists must do more'' to defend 
     Confederate leaders ``or else we'll be taught that these 
     people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred 
     fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda.'' And he 
     accepted an honorary degree from Bob Jones University in 
     1999. (It's a wonder that Mr. Bush would want to remind 
     anyone of his own disastrous trip there.)
       Mr. Ashcroft's successful campaign against Mr. White is 
     especially troubling. He opposed Mr. White for having voted 
     as a Missouri Supreme Court judge to overturn death 
     sentences. Mr. Ashcroft neglected to mention that some of his 
     own appointees had voted to overturn as many capital 
     sentences. Retired Missouri Supreme Court Judge Charles 
     Blackmar, a Republican appointee, criticized Mr. Ashcroft at 
     the time, saying: ``The senator seems to take the attitude 
     that any deviation is suspect, liberal, activist and I call 
     this tampering with the judiciary because of the effect it 
     might have in other states . . . where judges, who might hope 
     to be federal judges, feel a pressure to conform and to vote 
     to sustain the death penalty.''
       Mr. Bush said Friday that he was not worried about the 
     White case because of Mr. Ashcroft's record of appointing 
     African-Americans to the bench. In truth, Mr. Ashcroft had an 
     abysmal record and never appointed a black Supreme Court 
     judge.
       Mr. Ashcroft favors the most extreme form of a 
     constitutional amendment to ban all abortions. As state 
     attorney general he filed an unsuccessful antitrust suit 
     against the National Organization of Women because of its 
     economic boycott against states that opposed the Equal Rights 
     Amendment. More recently, he has opposed a strong federal 
     hate crimes law and a bill to bar job discrimination against 
     gays.
       All of which raises the question: Is John Ashcroft the 
     person who should be in charge of the nation's civil rights 
     enforcement? Is John Ashcroft the person to protect women who 
     are harassed on their way into abortion clinics? Is John 
     Ashcroft the right person to screen federal judges? In short, 
     is John Ashcroft's commitment to equal justice deep enough to 
     qualify him to be the nation's chief legal officer?
                                  ____


                [From the New York Times, Dec. 23, 2000]

                       Mr. Bush's Rightward Lurch

       The right-wingers who were beginning to feel like 
     wallflowers at George W. Bush's cabinet dance can stop 
     complaining. Mr. Bush, who made his earlier selections from 
     his party's ideological center, threw a big bouquet to the 
     ultraconservatives yesterday when he chose John Ashcroft, the 
     recently deposed Republican senator from Missouri, for the 
     post of attorney general. The nomination later in the day of 
     Christie Whitman, the moderate Republican governor of New 
     Jersey, to run the Environmental Protection Agency tilted the 
     overall composition of Mr. Bush's early choices back toward 
     the center. But that could not mute the widespread dismay 
     over Mr. Bush's troubling choice of Mr. Ashcroft.
       Mr. Bush is clearly hoping that Mr. Ashcroft's old 
     colleagues will extend him the usual senatorial courtesies 
     and confirm him with little dissent. But Mr. Ashcroft's hard-
     line ideology and extreme views and actions on issues like 
     abortion and civil rights require a searching examination at 
     his confirmation hearing. He should not be given an automatic 
     pass. The Senate is duty-bound to determine whether he will 
     be able to surmount his cramped social agenda to act as the 
     guardian of the nation's constitutional values.
       The attorney general has great discretion in deciding how 
     much energy to devote to protecting civil rights, broadening 
     civil liberties, keeping society free of crime, enforcing the 
     antitrust laws and making sure that the president and his 
     cabinet members are held to the same high standards--an area 
     in which the job's present occupant, Janet Reno, has been 
     deficient. More than any other cabinet officer, the attorney 
     general sets the moral tone of an administration.
       The position should clearly be filled with someone with a 
     reputation for balance, fairness and independence. Mr. 
     Ashcroft is by all accounts honest and hard-working. Yet he 
     is also, judging by the public record, a man of cramped 
     vision, unyielding attitudes and limited tolerance for those 
     who disagree with him. His actions on racial matters alone 
     are enough to give one pause. As Missouri's attorney general, 
     he opposed even a voluntary school desegregation plan in 
     metropolitan St. Louis. He also conducted a mean-spirited and 
     dishonest campaign against Ronnie White, Missouri's first 
     black State Supreme Court justice, when Justice White was 
     nominated for a federal judgeship. Mr. Ashcroft claimed, 
     erroneously, that Justice White was soft on the death 
     penalty. As an added insult, Mr. Ashcroft also accepted an 
     honorary degree last year from Bob Jones University, a 
     bastion of the Christian right with a history of racial 
     discrimination.
       Mr. Ashcroft has been one of the Senate's most adamant 
     opponents of a woman's right to choose an abortion. During 
     his political career in Missouri, he sought to criminalize 
     abortion, and he has consistently supported an extreme 
     constitutional amendment that would ban abortion even in the 
     case of rape or incest. Mr. Ashcroft has a poor record on 
     church-state issues and on gay rights, and a dismal record on 
     the environment. There is thus reason to wonder how 
     vigorously he will help Mrs. Whitman enforce environmental 
     laws.

[[Page 1234]]

       With Mrs. Whitman, Mr. Bush has offered a far more 
     appealing nominee for high office. His pledge to elevate the 
     E.P.A. post to cabinet level is also commendable. The E.P.A. 
     is no less important than the Interior Department in 
     providing responsible stewardship of the nation's natural 
     resources.
       On the plus side, Mrs. Whitman seems genuine in caring 
     about the environment, and as a Northeasterner, she is 
     intimately familiar with the problems of polluted air and 
     water. She joined with Gov. George Pataki of New York in 
     lawsuits aimed at curbing the pollution that drifts eastward 
     from Midwestern power plants, and she has worked to protect 
     the New Jersey coastline by investing in sewage treatment and 
     storm drainage projects. Although land conservation is mainly 
     Interior's responsibility, Mrs. Whitman demonstrated a real 
     appreciation for the importance of saving natural resources 
     for future generations when she sponsored a $1 billion open 
     space program, the largest in New Jersey's history.
       On the minus side, she slashed the budget for environmental 
     law enforcement and stopped levying meaningful fines against 
     big polluters. That pro-business mind-set will be disastrous 
     if continued in her new job, as will her oft-repeated but 
     naive faith in ``voluntary'' compliance with environmental 
     laws. As Mrs. Whitman will discover, there will be times when 
     negotiating skills simply don't suffice. She must be willing 
     to enforce the law in the face of relentless pressure, not 
     only from the big interest groups but from her superiors in 
     the White House.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Dec. 23, 2000]

                           Building a Cabinet

       President-elect Bush has been assembling a team that for 
     the most part is impressive in stature as well as diversity 
     of race, gender and background. His designation of New Jersey 
     Gov. Christine Todd Whitman to head the Environmental 
     Protection Agency fits that pattern. She has a mixed record 
     on the environment, but on the whole she has pushed to 
     protect open space and to marry economic growth to 
     environmental responsibility. Unfortunately, Gov. Bush also 
     took a step yesterday that was inconsistent with this 
     otherwise constructive performance. John Ashcroft, recently 
     defeated as Missouri senator, has a history out of sync with 
     the Bush rhetoric of inclusiveness. For the crucial post of 
     attorney general, Mr. Bush should have reached higher.
       Gov. Whitman, in seven years as New Jersey chief executive, 
     won passage of a $1 billion initiative that aims, over the 
     next decade, to save a million acres of open space from 
     development. Clean-air advocates give her credit for backing 
     tough federal air pollution standards and for efforts to 
     reduce greenhouse gas emissions in New Jersey. Her 
     administration has strongly supported the new heavy truck and 
     diesel fuel pollution standards the Clinton administration 
     issued this week. She has fought ocean dumping and cleaned up 
     beaches, and she is currently heading a Pew Foundation-funded 
     commission to assess what national steps are needed to 
     protect oceans and marine life.
       Gov. Whitman's efforts to make New Jersey more business-
     friendly, particularly in the early days of her 
     administration, earned her sharp criticism from local 
     environmental groups. She was condemned for cutting the staff 
     and budget of the state's environmental agency in her first 
     term and for reducing the reporting requirements on toxic 
     chemical emissions. It will be important for her to make 
     clear in confirmation hearings how she intends to pursue 
     EPA's enforcement mission, but she brings stature and 
     experience to the job. The new administration's posture on 
     the environment will become clearer after Gov. Bush selects 
     his interior and energy chiefs and fills critical sub-Cabinet 
     positions. But Gov. Whitman's appointment, and Gov. Bush's 
     decision to keep the EPA chief in the Cabinet, are positive 
     first steps.
       Not so the Ashcroft pick. Mr. Ashcroft handled with class 
     and sensitivity his defeat last month by a dead man, the late 
     Gov. Mel Carnahan. But his Senate tenure was marked by hard-
     right stances on abortion rights, civil liberties and other 
     issues. He fought confirmation of many of President Clinton's 
     judicial nominations, including well-qualified moderates. In 
     the case of Ronnie White, an African American justice of the 
     Missouri Supreme Court whom Mr. Clinton nominated to a 
     District Court vacancy in Mr. Ashcroft's state. Mr. Ashcroft 
     rallied the Senate's Republican caucus to defeat the 
     nomination in a manner tinged with racial politics and unfair 
     to the nominee. Gov. Bush campaigned as a conservative, and 
     he should be expected to appoint conservatives to his 
     Cabinet, as he has with impressive choices for the State 
     Department, the Treasury Department and other posts. But the 
     Senate confirmation process should examine whether Mr. 
     Ashcroft's particular brand of conservatism is best suited to 
     the attorney general's post.

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, just six weeks ago, President Bush 
nominated Senator John Ashcroft to serve as Attorney General of the 
United States. Since then, the nomination has been a source of intense 
controversy in the Senate and across the Nation.
  At the center of the debate is one basic question--will Senator 
Ashcroft enforce the law fairly and vigorously. Today, I will cast my 
vote against Senator Ashcroft, because I believe that he cannot do so.
  My belief is based on Senator Ashcroft's quarter century track record 
as a relentless opponent of civil rights--as an architect of a 
continuing legal strategy to dismantle Roe v. Wade--as an outspoken 
advocate of extreme Second Amendment rights--and as a harsh and unfair 
opponent of the nominations of well-qualified men and women to 
important positions in our government.
  On the issue of segregation in the schools of St. Louis, Senator 
Ashcroft testified before the Judiciary Committee that the State of 
Missouri had done nothing wrong and had not been found guilty of any 
wrongdoing.
  But that's not true. On numerous occasions, the courts specifically 
found that the State was responsible for the segregation.
  Senator Ashcroft testified that he complied with all court orders in 
the desegregation case.
  But that's not true. In fact, the court ruled that he had a 
deliberate policy of defying the court's authority.
  Senator Ashcroft testified that he never opposed integration.
  But that's not true. In fact, he referred to the St. Louis voluntary 
desegregation plan as ``an outrage against human decency.'' And he 
fanned the flames of racial division by campaigning against the 
desegregation plan in his race for Governor in 1984.
  On the issue of voter registration, Senator Ashcroft's record as 
Governor is equally troubling.
  In heavily white St. Louis County, he endorsed a policy of training 
volunteers to register voters.
  But in St. Louis City, which has the State's largest African American 
population, he and his appointed election board refused to allow 
volunteers to be trained to register voters.
  In fact, he even went so far as Governor to veto 2 bills to use 
volunteer registrars in the City.
  As a result there were 1,500 volunteers involved in voter 
registration in St. Louis County and zero in St. Louis City.
  After Governor Ashcroft vetoed the two voter registration bills, the 
voter registration rate in St. Louis dropped by almost 20 percent.
  With this record, how can anyone believe that Senator Ashcroft will 
be a champion of voting rights for all Americans, particularly African 
Americans?
  Senator Ashcroft testified that Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the 
land, and that he would not try to overturn it.
  But his record of three decades of non-stop attacks on a woman's 
right to choose tell a different story.
  As Attorney General of Missouri, he defended a state rule that 
prevented poor women from obtaining abortions that were medically 
necessary to protect their health. He even tried to prevent Missouri 
nurses from providing basic family planning services.
  As Governor of Missouri, he continued his intense assault on a 
woman's right to choose. He made clear that his mission was to have the 
Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade.
  He boasted about Missouri's record of having more anti-choice cases 
in the Supreme Court than any state in the Nation.
  He even proposed legislation to prohibit many common forms of 
contraception.
  As a Senator, he has strongly supported a Constitutional Amendment to 
ban abortions--even in cases of rape or incest.
  The power of the Attorney General is vast. The person who holds that 
position must have a genuine commitment to enforce the law fairly for 
all citizens.

[[Page 1235]]

  But Senator Ashcroft has a deeply disturbing record on issue after 
issue of enormous importance to millions of Americans.
  Throughout his long career, he has been a relentless opponent of many 
fundamental rights. He's wrong on civil rights--wrong on a woman's 
right to choose--wrong on needed steps to keep guns out of the hands of 
criminals and children. He's wrong on many other fundamental issues, 
and he's the wrong choice to be Attorney General of the United States. 
It is wrong to send him to be the Attorney General of the United 
States. I intend to vote no.
  I withhold the remainder of my time and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I spoke at length yesterday about the 
deep sense of pain and sadness and fear engendered by this nomination. 
It has not been an easy few weeks for those who have been involved. 
Whatever the result today, scars remain. There are some scars, of 
course, on Senator Ashcroft, but he is a strong and God-fearing man and 
I know he will recover from those and I hope and pray that he does.
  There are scars on the Senate in terms of our bipartisanship and 
ability to work together. Again, I think the desire for bipartisanship 
is strong in this body, and I don't think those scars will be 
permanent. There are some scars from the initial days of the Presidency 
of George Bush, who had campaigned for inclusiveness, bringing people 
together. This nomination clearly did not do that, whatever else it has 
done.
  Again, most of the other President's nominees, this nomination 
notwithstanding, have been bipartisan nominees, and hopefully while 
this is clearly a setback in bringing people together in that 
bipartisanship, it is not going to be a problem.
  I have made my views known on the floor and in committee as to why 
John Ashcroft does not deserve to be our Attorney General, despite his 
career in public service, despite his deep faith, and despite the fact 
that he is seen as an honorable man by most in this body.
  But I hope one thing. Out of the scar tissue and the divisiveness and 
the argument we have had, I hope something good comes about, and that 
is this: I hope the President has seen the sadness and the pain and the 
fear engendered by this nomination. I hope when he nominates people to 
the U.S. Supreme Court we will not have a repeat of what has happened 
today. I hope he nominates somebody of intelligence and judicious 
temperament and devotion to fairness. But I hope he nominates somebody 
who unites the American people, who brings us together, who is not 
identified with one extreme faction--either on the far right or the far 
left.
  I do not expect George Bush to nominate a liberal to the Supreme 
Court, but I hope and pray this nomination has taught us that rather 
than a nomination of somebody on the extreme, when it deals with the 
judicial issues, the legal issues that affect us, it is much better off 
for either a Democrat or Republican President to nominate a moderate--a 
thoughtful jurist but a moderate.
  I think what has happened with the Ashcroft nomination in terms of 
divisiveness would look small compared to the divisiveness that would 
occur if someone of Senator Ashcroft's beliefs were nominated to the 
U.S. Supreme Court.
  At the end of the day we will all vote what we think is best. We will 
each vote our conscience. But I think every one of us can take a lesson 
from what has happened here in the last few weeks. That lesson is a 
simple one. When it comes to enforcing the law, as the Attorney General 
does, when it comes to sitting on the highest court of this land, 
moderation is, indeed, a virtue.
  I hope and pray all of us, including our President, will take from 
this battle the view that his nominations for the Supreme Court will 
better serve the Nation if they come from the middle, from the broad 
moderate section of our political spectrum.
  Mr. President, I will vote against Senator Ashcroft. I do that with 
the conviction that it is the right thing to do in terms of my beliefs, 
in terms of what is good for the people of New York, in terms of what 
is good for the people of America. I hope we will not have to go 
through a similar battle when Supreme Court nominees come before us.
  Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from New York 
for his words. Could the Chair please advise the Senator from Vermont 
what is the parliamentary situation?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time that was allocated to the Senator 
from Vermont was reallocated, by unanimous consent, to Senators 
Kennedy, Bayh, and Schumer.
  Mr. LEAHY. I thank the Chair. My understanding is the distinguished 
Senator from Indiana, Mr. Bayh, will be here presently. To use his 
time, I will continue under the time reserved to this side. I would 
like to commend a number of Senators for their contributions to this 
matter during the day and a half we have been debating it.
  I believe Senator Kennedy--we just heard him--made extraordinarily 
persuasive, fact-based presentations on some troubling aspects of the 
nominee's background. I hope all Senators listened to the remarks of 
Senator Mikulski, who spoke to the heart of the question and put to 
rest the false charge the Democrats are applying a narrow ideological 
litmus test. I appreciate the eloquent words of her colleague from 
Maryland, Senator Sarbanes, this morning. In the fashion to which we 
have become accustomed from Senator Sarbanes, he discussed the history 
of the nomination, including the hearing. I continue to marvel at the 
expertise of the senior Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, for his 
comprehensive remarks distilled so wisely and lucidly from the hearing 
record. Senator Durbin spent an extraordinary amount of time on this 
during the hearings. I think the whole Senate benefitted from the 
knowledge he gained from those hearings. Senator Levin presented his 
characteristically thoughtful remarks and careful reasoning. I thank 
him for that.
  As I said, we heard just now from the senior Senator from New York, 
Mr. Schumer. Not only did he speak so well on the floor, but all the 
Senate was helped by his thorough work during the hearings and with the 
kind of committee service that distinguished him on the Judiciary 
Committee both here and in the kind of service he had in the other body 
before.
  We heard the fine remarks of my friend from New Mexico, Senator 
Bingaman; the forthrightness of Senator Carper; the plain-spoken 
eloquence of Senator Stabenow; the statesmanship of Senator Kerry.
  I think of the words of the distinguished senior Senator from 
Florida, Mr. Graham, who brought to the Senate the important 
circumstances of his State and his concerns--unique among all of us 
here.
  Of course, my friend, the assistant Democratic leader, Senator Reid 
of Nevada, has given the kind of help he always does in debates. It is 
something the public does not see, but he is the glue that holds 
everything together. Then, added to that was his own strong statement 
on the floor.
  I think of Senator Byrd, almost my seatmate in the Senate, with whom 
I served for over a quarter of a century and thank him for sharing his 
views.
  I thank my Republican colleagues for their views, those Senators who 
supported this nomination, as Senator Byrd did.
  I think about what Senator Harkin said when he spoke again eloquently 
today, and Senator Lieberman, who spoke not only about his relationship 
with Senator Ashcroft but of his own

[[Page 1236]]

concerns about the issues of morality and of one's upbringing, and 
Senator Edwards, a person who went from the courtroom to the Senate, 
and represents the best of both places.
  I also commend Senator Hatch, of course, for his management of the 
debate.
  I yield to the senior Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I thank our leader on this issue on this 
side of the aisle, the senior Senator from Vermont, for the fine, 
outstanding job of leadership and fairness that he has shown throughout 
these hearings. Every witness who was called on got to testify. We had 
plenty of time to question. All the questions were brought out in a 
fair and strong way, but not in any kind of mean-spirited way. When 
things began to drift a little bit out of hand, the Senator would wield 
his big gavel that he had at the beginning of the hearing and his own 
personal gavel that he wielded throughout. He did a wonderful job. And 
of course his speeches on the floor and in committee have been among 
the most thoughtful, erudite, and well researched of all of them. I 
think I speak for all of us on the Judiciary Committee and in the 
Senate as a whole: We really thank the senior Senator for the great job 
he has done during these trying weeks.
  I yield to the senior Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. I thank the Senator from New York. I have often said how 
much I enjoyed being on the Senate Judiciary Committee. One of the 
reasons is that the Senator from New York serves there.
  It is a committee where we often have spirited debates. We usually 
debate the most interesting issues before the Senate, but I rely more 
and more on the Senator from New York to boil down the essence of the 
arguments and to lead that debate.
  I am sorry the Senator from Utah is not on the floor at the moment, 
but the Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch, and I worked very hard to put 
together a hearing where both sides could be heard. I believe we did 
that. In fact, unlike the usual practice here, both sides had the same 
number of witnesses. If I recall, in this case, the minority side, the 
Republican side, actually had one more witness. But we tried to make 
sure that anybody who could add anything to the debate and should be 
heard was heard.
  Even during the hearings, we actually had people who were added at 
the last minute at the request of Senator Hatch. He showed unfailing 
courtesy throughout all that, and I thank him for that.
  I see the Senator from Indiana in the Chamber. I ask unanimous 
consent that the following editorials and materials with regard to the 
Ashcroft nomination be printed in the Record:
  A column by Steve Neal from the Chicago Sun-Times of January 31, 
2001;
  An editorial from the Christian Science Monitor of today, February 1, 
2001;
  An editorial from the Rutland Daily Herald of January 24, 2001;
  A column by Stuart Taylor from National Journal of January 13, 2001;
  A column by Stuart Taylor from National Journal of October 10, 1999; 
and
  An op-ed by Benjamin Wittes from Washington Post of October 13, 1999.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

           [From The Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 1, 2001]

                         Ashcroft's Tough Tasks

       President Bush asked the Senate to look into the hearts of 
     each of his cabinet nominees. Through careful, albeit 
     contentious, hearings for his nominee for attorney general, 
     John Ashcroft, the Senate tried to do just that.
       In those hearings, Americans got a first, strong taste of 
     the rancor that can occur when the Senate, and the country, 
     is split right down the middle on social issues. The 
     controversy over Mr. Ashcroft's nomination broke along 
     clearly partisan lines.
       Ashcroft may now be confirmed by the Senate, but the 
     Democrats have fired a warning shot over the Bush ship of 
     state. Their message: Expect more battles over conservative 
     legal appointments--to the Supreme Court or elsewhere.
       Ashcroft's deeply conservative views on abortion, civil 
     rights, and guns were subjected to extraordinarily close 
     scrutiny by Democrats and liberal groups. Still, his critics 
     were left unsatisfied.
       Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee's 
     ranking Democrat, summarized much of the concern over Mr. 
     Ashcroft's candor when he spoke on the Senate floor this 
     week: ``Most of us in this body have known the old John 
     Ashcroft. During the hearings, we met a new John Ashcroft. 
     Were the demurrals of his testimony real, or were they 
     delicate bubbles that could burst and evaporate a year or a 
     month or a day from now under the reassertion of his long-
     held beliefs?''
       The core issue is whether, as attorney general, Ashcroft 
     will put his own ideology above the law.
       Supporters, such as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) of Iowa, say 
     Ashcroft has demonstrated the integrity to maintain his ``by-
     the-book approach to governing'' as he goes about cleaning up 
     a Justice Department he and others feel has lacked integrity.
       The new attorney general's adherence to that standard will 
     be closely watched. As he promised the committee, he'll have 
     to ``vigorously'' uphold the laws of the land whether he 
     personally agrees with them or not--including the Supreme 
     Court's decision legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade, which 
     Ashcroft acknowledged as ``settled law.''
       Testimony regarding Ashcroft's opposition to the 
     appointment of a black Missouri judge to the federal bench 
     was particularly disturbing. The judge, Ronnie White, said 
     then-Senator Ashcroft distorted his record, calling him 
     ``pro-criminal,'' based on his interpretation of a few of 
     Judge White's written decisions.
       Even if Ashcroft's motives at the time were political, not 
     racial, the episode leaves doubts about his judgment among 
     African-Americans and others.
       Ashcroft will have to work especially hard to surmount both 
     his critics and some elements of his own record, and to prove 
     to the country that he will be, as Senator Leahy said, an 
     attorney general ``for all the people.''
                                  ____


              [From the Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 31, 2001]

                      Some More Equal Than Others

                            (By Steve Neal)

       The attorney general is supposed to represent all of us.
       That's what is so troubling about John Ashcroft's 
     nomination to be the chief law enforcement officer of this 
     country.
       Some of our more distinguished attorneys general served in 
     Republican administrations. Edward Levi restored integrity in 
     the Justice Department after Watergate. Elliot Richardson 
     showed great principle in resigning when Richard M. Nixon 
     ordered him to fire the special prosecutor investigating 
     Nixon's role in the scandal that brought down his presidency. 
     Herbert Brownell drafted the first civil rights law since 
     Reconstruction and recommended the use of federal troops when 
     the governor of Arkansas sought to block integration of 
     Central High School in Little Rock.
       Each of these three men was committed to equal justice 
     under the law. Ashcroft doesn't meet that standard. Though he 
     is a person of ability and intelligence, his public record is 
     one of unfairness, intolerance and exclusion.
       His role in sinking the nomination of Missouri Supreme 
     Court Justice Ronnie White for the federal bench was 
     disgraceful. Ashcroft twisted and distorted White's judicial 
     record. The Judiciary Committee, which had a GOP majority at 
     the time of White's nomination, recommended his confirmation. 
     Then Ashcroft waged a mean-spirited crusade that destroyed 
     White's chances. He was dishonest in labeling White's 
     judicial philosophy as ``pro-criminal'' and claiming that he 
     had ``a tremendous bent toward criminal activity.'' There is 
     no evidence that Ashcroft went after the African-American 
     judge because of his race. It is more likely that he attacked 
     White as part of his re-election strategy.
       Ashcroft's record on civil rights, though, is alarming. As 
     governor and attorney general of Missouri, he bitterly 
     opposed court-ordered school desegregation in Kansas City and 
     St. Louis. More than two decades after the Brown vs. Board of 
     Education ruling made equal access to public education the 
     law, Ashcroft still was making the argument that it was 
     better to have segregated schools. As a candidate for 
     statewide office, he fanned racial tensions with his shrill 
     attacks on school integration. He didn't seem to care that 
     African-American youngsters were being denied an equal 
     education.
       As governor of Missouri, he vetoed legislation that would 
     have boosted voter registration in minority communities. He 
     claimed that the proposed law would have led to voter fraud. 
     If he is confirmed as the next attorney general, he would 
     have responsibility for enforcing the Voting Rights Act.
       During his Senate testimony, Ashcroft said that he would 
     not attempt to undermine Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court 
     decision that upheld a woman's legal right to have an 
     abortion. But he has spent his entire public career trying to 
     outlaw abortions or make them impossible to obtain. He is 
     opposed to abortion even in cases of rape or incest.
       ``Both now and in my first term as [Missouri] attorney 
     general,'' he told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 
     1981, ``I have devoted considerable time and significant 
     resources to defending the right of the state to

[[Page 1237]]

     limit the dangerous impacts of Roe vs. Wade, a case in which 
     a handful of men on the Supreme Court arbitrarily amended the 
     Constitution and overturned the laws of the states related to 
     abortions.'' Ashcroft has previously referred to the Roe 
     decision as ``error-ridden.'' Most Americans disagree with 
     that viewpoint.
       In his written response to the Judiciary committee, he 
     vowed not to re-fight these battles because the issue had 
     been settled ``through the passage of time and reaffirmation 
     by the Supreme Court.'' But he never has stopped trying to 
     reverse this landmark decision.
       Ashcroft was misguided in his assault on the nomination of 
     the openly gay James C. Hormel to be ambassador to 
     Luxembourg. ``Based on the totality of Mr. Hormel's record of 
     public positions and advocacy, I did not believe he would 
     effectively represent the United States in Luxembourg, the 
     most Roman Catholic country in all of Europe,'' he said in 
     1998.
       Based on the totality of Mr. Ashcroft's record, he is less 
     than committed to equal protection under the law. This cold-
     hearted man is unfit to be the people's lawyer.
                                  ____


             [From the Rutland Daily Herald, Jan. 24, 2001]

                             No to Ashcroft

       Democrats should not be shy about voting against John 
     Ashcroft when his nomination for attorney general comes 
     before the Senate Judiciary Committee and to the Senate 
     floor.
       If they are afraid of being tarred as partisan extremists 
     for opposing Ashcroft's nomination, they ought to recognize 
     that Bush's decision to appoint Ashcroft was in itself an 
     unapologetic partisan action.
       The Senate almost never rejects a president's cabinet 
     nominee, and the vote count suggests it will not reject 
     Ashcroft. It would be an extraordinary turn of events if it 
     did.
       That's because Senate Republicans are lined up unanimously 
     on the side of their party and their president. That includes 
     Sen. James Jeffords, who is a member of a vocal quartet with 
     Ashcroft and who plans to endorse his appointment.
       This is not one of those moments when the Senate's moderate 
     Republicans are inclined to stray from the party line. On 
     other issues--campaign finance, tax cuts, missile defense--
     the Republican leadership will not be able to rely so surely 
     on unanimity within the party.
       Ashcroft's nomination has also won the support of a few 
     Democrats, which assures him of victory in the Senate. But 
     for most Democrats, a no vote on the Ashcroft nomination 
     sends an important signal: that bipartisan progress is not 
     achieved by pushing the most extreme brand of Republican 
     ideology.
       Under questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee, 
     Ashcroft felt compelled to repudiate an ideology opposed to 
     civil and women's rights. One wonders why Bush appointed him 
     if it meant he would have to shed the views that have shaped 
     his career. The likely reason is that Bush wanted to appease 
     the religious right.
       Everyone was quick to praise Ashcroft's integrity and to 
     deny that he was a racist. But what kind of integrity is 
     involved in the attempt to smear another person's reputation, 
     as he did with Ronnie White, a judge who had been appointed 
     to the federal bench?
       In many areas, Democrats are likely to cooperate with 
     Republicans for the sake of bipartisan achievement. It 
     appears that Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Edward Kennedy are 
     willing to work with Bush to put together an education 
     package. And Bush appears willing to court Democratic support 
     by gearing his education package toward low-income students.
       In the same vein, Republicans such as Jeffords should be 
     willing to break the party line for the sake of campaign 
     finance reform, health care, and other initiatives that the 
     Republican leadership has long opposed.
       The Senate Judiciary Committee was able to win concessions 
     from Ashcroft on civil rights and women's rights, but his 
     work as attorney general will involve far more than the high-
     profile issues on which the interest groups always focus.
       He will help shape anti-trust policy and the government's 
     position on the Microsoft case. He will help shape policy on 
     juvenile justice, which has been slipping back toward the 
     dark ages, and on sentencing policy, which has become 
     dangerously rigid because of mandatory sentences. He will 
     apportion resources within the Department of Justice, 
     deciding how much emphasis to put on civil rights 
     enforcement.
       In electing a Republican, Vermonters might have expected 
     that Jeffords would maintain party loyalty in instances such 
     as the Ashcroft nomination. Jeffords will have many other 
     opportunities to show his independence, and Vermonters will 
     be watching.
       In electing a Democrat, Vermonters expect Leahy to uphold 
     civil and women's rights. In voting no on Ashcroft, he will 
     be affirming that even with a Republican president, these 
     values should not be allowed to erode.
                                  ____


               [From the National Journal, Jan. 13, 2001]

          A Character Assassin Should Not Be Attorney General

                         (By Stuart Taylor Jr.)

       Former Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., is an able and 
     accomplished man who won the respect of many Senate 
     colleagues in both parties. But he is unfit to be Attorney 
     General. The reason is that during an important debate on a 
     sensitive matter, then-Sen. Ashcroft abused the power of his 
     office by descending to demagoguery, dishonesty, and 
     character assassination.
       The debate was over President Clinton's nomination of 
     Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie White to become a federal 
     district judge. Although too liberal to be picked by a 
     Republican President, White had shown himself to be an 
     honest, skilled, and sometimes eloquent jurist, well within 
     the moderate mainstream. But Ashcroft, leaning hard on 
     Republican Senators who would otherwise have voted to 
     confirm, engineered a 54-45 party-line vote on Oct. 5, 1999, 
     to reject White's nomination. Worse, Ashcroft claimed on the 
     Senate floor that Judge White had ``a serious bias against . 
     . . the death penalty''; that he was ``pro-criminal and 
     activist, [and would] push law in a pro-criminal direction''; 
     and that he had ``a tremendous bent toward criminal 
     activity.'' The first statement was a wild exaggeration. The 
     second was a demagogic distortion. The third was a malicious 
     smear.
       Ashcroft is not the man to head the Justice Department. The 
     job is vested with such vast authority over the lives of 
     people great and small, and such symbolic importance, that 
     the minimum qualifications should include honesty, fair-
     mindedness, and judicious self-restraint in the exercise of 
     power. Every new President is entitled to Senate deference in 
     choosing his Cabinet, even when the nominee's policy views 
     draw bitter liberal or conservative opposition. (Linda Chavez 
     might have become a distinguished Labor Secretary but for her 
     sad mistake of failing to tell Bush vetters up front what 
     they needed to know about her illegal-immigrant issue.) But 
     no President is entitled to put a character assassin in 
     charge of law enforcement.
       All this would be true even if Judge White were white, if 
     Ashcroft had not expressed such fondness for the Confederacy, 
     if race were not an issue, and if Ashcroft were in tune with 
     the Bush pledge to be a uniter, not a divider. But White is 
     black. The racial context makes Ashcroft's orchestration of a 
     floor vote against a judicial nominee, the first since 1987 
     (when Robert H. Bork's Supreme Court nomination went down), 
     all the more deplorable. And Ashcroft's confrontational 
     advocacy of absolutist views makes him a divider, not a 
     uniter.
       This is not to endorse the unfounded and tiresomely 
     irresponsible suggestions by some liberal critics that 
     Ashcroft's attacks on Judge White were motivated by racial 
     bias or hostility to antidiscrimination laws. Nor is it to 
     join the claque who would fight any conservative nominee for 
     Justice as racially insensitive and divisive. But it does 
     appear that Ashcroft was deliberately engaging in 
     inflammatory racial politics--in part to boost his own 2000 
     re-election prospects by hanging the ``pro-criminal'' label 
     both on Judge White and on then-Gov. Mel Carnahan, who had 
     appointed White and was gunning for Ashcroft's Senate seat. 
     Ashcroft must have known that accusing a black judge 
     (falsely) of being ``pro-criminal'' and of ``a tremendous 
     bent toward criminal activity'' would stir the worst 
     instincts of those voters who stereotype criminality as 
     black.
       One result of Ashcroft's reckless roiling of racial 
     tensions is that he would have especially low credibility 
     with the vast majority of African-Americans, including 
     moderates and conservatives who eschew the race-baiting 
     rhetoric of victimologists such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson. 
     Indeed, people who hope to see the Justice Department move 
     away from its long-standing advocacy of race-based 
     affirmative action preferences (as I do) should wonder: Can 
     John Ashcroft be a credible advocate of making the law more 
     color-blind? I doubt it.
       Deceptive rhetoric aside, is Ronnie White soft on crime? 
     Not unless one equates measured concern for civil liberties 
     with softness. According to Justice Department numbers, 
     White, as of October 1999, had voted to uphold 41 (almost 70 
     percent) of the 59 death sentences he had reviewed. He voted 
     to reverse the other 18, including 10 that were unanimously 
     reversed and just three in which he was the only dissenter. 
     (Some say that White reviewed 61 death sentences and voted to 
     reverse 20.) His rate of affirmance was only marginally lower 
     than the 75 percent to 81 percent averages of the five 
     current Missouri Supreme Court judges whom Ashcroft himself 
     appointed when he was governor.
       Ashcroft stressed that Judge White had dissented from 
     decisions affirming death sentences four times as often as 
     any Ashcroft-appointed colleague. True. But does this suggest 
     that White would ``push law in a pro-criminal direction,'' as 
     Ashcroft said--or that Ashcroft appointees were rubber-
     stamping unfair trials?
       The two dissents most directly assailed by Ashcroft in fact 
     exude moderation and care in dealing with the tension between 
     crime-fighting and civil liberties. In a 1998 decision, the 
     majority upheld the murder convictions and death sentence of 
     a previously law-abiding Vietnam veteran named James Johnson,

[[Page 1238]]

     who had suddenly turned violent. He stalked and killed a 
     sheriff, two deputies, and another sheriff's wife in a 
     horrifying succession of shootings that erupted out of a 
     domestic dispute. The only defense was insanity. The 
     immediate issue was whether Johnson should get a new trial, 
     after which he would either go back to death row or be locked 
     up in a mental hospital.
       If Johnson ``was in control of his faculties when he went 
     on this murderous rampage,'' Judge White wrote, ``then he 
     assuredly deserves the death sentence he was given.'' But the 
     jury's consideration of the insanity defense had been skewed 
     by an egregious blunder. Johnson's court-appointed attorney 
     had begun by stressing that a rope-and-tin-can ``perimeter'' 
     around Johnson's garage was evidence that he had been under a 
     delusion that he was back in Vietnam, at war. This was a gift 
     to the prosecution, which blew the back-in-Vietnam strategy 
     to bits by showing that the police had set up the perimeter.
       Both Judge White and his colleagues faulted the defense 
     attorney (for inadequate investigation) as well as the 
     prosecution (for leaving the defense attorney with a false 
     impression of the facts). They differed only on whether there 
     was a ``reasonable probability'' that the jury might 
     otherwise have found Johnson insane. The majority said no. 
     Judge White said yes. His conclusion was plausible, 
     debatable, highly unpopular (especially among police), and 
     (for that reason) courageous. For Ashcroft to call it ``pro-
     criminal'' was obscene.
       In the second case, one Brian Kinder was sentenced to die 
     for a heinous rape-murder. Judge White's ``only basis'' for 
     voting to give Kinder a new trial, Ashcroft claimed, was that 
     the trial judge had said he was ``opposed to affirmative 
     action.'' False. In fact, Judge White's dissent termed that 
     comment (made in a campaign press release) ``irrelevant to 
     the issue of bias.'' Instead he stressed another, 
     ``indefensibly racist'' assertion in which the trial judge 
     had contrasted ``minorities'' with ``hard-working 
     taxpayers.'' This cast grave doubt on the impartiality of a 
     judge who was to try a black man for murder in just six days, 
     Judge White concluded. His dissent was far more candid and 
     convincing than the majority opinion.
       Pro-criminal? Some police groups, including 77 of 
     Missouri's 114 sheriffs, criticized Judge White's record. But 
     other law enforcement officials praised him as a good judge 
     and ``an upright, fine individual,'' in the words of Carl 
     Wolf, president of the Missouri Police Chiefs Association.
       The smearing of Judge White makes the many testimonials to 
     Ashcroft's integrity ring a bit hollow. But quite apart from 
     that episode, it was most unwise for President-elect Bush to 
     choose Ashcroft for Attorney General. The reason is that 
     Ashcroft is an uncompromising absolutist with a bellicose 
     approach to issues ranging from gay rights and gun control to 
     abortion (which would be a crime, if Ashcroft had his way, 
     even in cases of rape and incest). He is also dead wrong (in 
     my view) on major issues, including his aggressive push to 
     cram even more nonviolent, small-time offenders who pose no 
     threat to society into our prison-industrial complex, which 
     has already mushroomed to 2 million inmates.
       What would I be saying if it were President-elect Al Gore 
     trying to put the Justice Department under (say) Sen. Edward 
     Kennedy, D-Mass.--who smeared another judicial nominee (in 
     1987) by saying: ``Robert Bork's America is a land in which 
     women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would 
     sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break 
     down citizens' doors in midnight raids .  .  .''
       I would be saying that a character assassin should not be 
     Attorney General. How about you?
                                  ____


               [From the National Journal, Oct. 16, 1999]

                   The Shame of The Ronnie White Vote

                         (By Stuart Taylor Jr.)

       The Democratic spin is that the Republican Senate's Oct. 5 
     party-line vote, 54-45, to reject Ronnie L. White's 
     nomination for a U.S. District Court seat in Missouri was 
     tinged with racism. At the very least, as President Clinton 
     put it, the vote adds ``credence to the perceptions that they 
     treat minority and women judicial nominees unfairly and 
     unequally.''
       The Republican spin is, not surprisingly, quite different. 
     In the words of White's main critic, Sen. John Ashcroft, R-
     Mo., White's record as a Missouri Supreme Court judge is 
     ``pro-criminal and activist,'' and exudes a serious bias 
     against * * * the death penalty,'' even ``a tremendous bent 
     toward criminal activity,'' Indeed, said Sen. Don Nickles, R-
     Okla. ``many'' Republican Senators ``didn't know what race 
     Judge White is.''
       Which is the closer to the truth?
       Numbers supply part of the answer. Judge White has voted to 
     uphold 70 percent (41) of the 59 death sentences he has 
     reviewed, while voting to reverse the other 18, including 10 
     that were unanimously reversed and three in which he was the 
     only dissenter. That's a bit below the 75 percent to 81 
     percent averages of the five current Missouri Supreme Court 
     judges whom Ashcroft himself appointed when he was Governor, 
     according to numbers compiled by the Missouri Democratic 
     Party. It's well above the 53 percent average of Elwood 
     Thomas, the now-deceased Ashcroft appointee whom White 
     replaced in 1995.
       As for race, the raw fact is that the Senate's rejection of 
     the 46-year-old White--the first black person ever to sit on 
     the Missouri Supreme Court--was its first floor vote against 
     any judicial nominee since 1987, when the Senate spurned 
     Robert H. Bork for the U.S. Supreme Court. But Democrats are 
     quick to cite statistics showing that the Senate has 
     confirmed a substantially smaller percentage of Clinton's 
     minority judicial nominees than of his white nominees--while 
     taking longer to bring their nominations to a vote. Some 
     Republicans claim that a higher percentage of Clinton's 
     minority nominees are liberal activists. Perhaps that's true. 
     But does Ronnie White fit that bill?
       Consider White's two lone death-penalty dissents 
     specifically criticized by Ashcroft. One involved a rape-
     murder for which one Brian Kinder was sentenced to die. Judge 
     White's ``only basis'' for voting to give Kinder a new trial, 
     Ashcroft told his colleagues, was that Earl R. Blackwell, the 
     trial judge, had said he was ``opposed to affirmative 
     action.''
       This was a cynical distortion. In fact, White's dissent 
     stated that Judge Black-well's criticism of affirmative 
     action--which came in a campaign press release explaining his 
     decision to leave the Democratic Party--was ``irrelevant to 
     the issue of bias.'' What was ``indefensibly racist,'' he 
     continued, was the following assertion in Blackwell's press 
     release:
       ``While minorities need to be represented or [sic] course, 
     I believe the time has come for us to place much more 
     emphasis and concern on the hard-working taxpayers in this 
     country.''
       As White wrote, this ``pernicious racial stereotype * * * 
     is not ambiguous or complex (nor, unfortunately, original).'' 
     It means ``that minorities are not hard-working taxpayers.''
       And for Judge Blackwell to issue such a statement--six days 
     before he was to begin the trial of a black man facing the 
     death penalty--``created a reasonable suspicion that he could 
     not preside over the case impartially.''
       Judge White was right. And his eloquent dissent was both 
     more candid and more consistent with his court's own 
     precedents than was the majority opinion.
       Ashcroft also assailed White's dissent from a 1998 decision 
     upholding the murder convictions and death sentence of one 
     James Johnson. In an appalling succession of shootings 
     growing out of a domestic dispute at Johnson's home, the 
     previously law abiding Vietnam veteran had stalked and killed 
     a sheriff, two deputies, and the wife of another sheriff. His 
     only defense was insanity.
       ``If Mr. Johnson was in control of his faculties when he 
     went on this murderous rampage, then he assuredly deserves 
     the death sentence he was given,'' Judge White wrote. But a 
     blunder by Johnson's defense lawyer, White added, had so 
     ``utterly destroyed the credibility'' of his insanity defense 
     as to deny him a fair trial.
       In his opening statement, the defense lawyer had focused on 
     a story that Johnson--who claimed to have no memory of what 
     he had done--had strung a ``perimeter'' of rope and cans 
     around his garage under the delusion that he was ``back in 
     Vietnam,'' in combat. This scenario was soon exposed as 
     fiction: The prosecution revealed with a flourish that the 
     ``perimeter'' had been the work of police staking out 
     Johnson's home after the killings.
       The majority and Judge White alike faulted both the defense 
     lawyer (for inadequate investigation) and the state (for 
     leaving him with a false impression of the facts). They 
     differed on whether there was a ``reasonable probability'' 
     that, but for these unprofessional lapses, the jury might 
     have upheld the insanity defense. The majority said no; Judge 
     White--noting that Johnson's homicidal conduct suggested at 
     least ``something akin to madness''--said yes.
       I'm not sure whether he was right. But it surely was a case 
     on which reasonable judges could disagree.
       And in another such case, in 1996, it was Judge White who 
     wrote the court's decision upholding a brutal killer's death 
     sentence--and it was an Ashcroft appointee, then Chief Judge 
     John C. Holstein, who dissented. The cornerstone of any 
     civilized system of justice,'' Holstein wrote then, ``is that 
     the rules are applied evenly to everyone, no matter how 
     despicable the crime.''




       That does not seem to be the view of many Senate 
     Republicans now. Their treatment of Ronnie White suggests 
     that they prefer judges to rubber-stamp the decisions of 
     trial judges, prosecutors, and police.
       Sen. Ashcroft also stressed criticism of White's record by 
     police groups, including 77 of Missouri's 114 sheriffs. This 
     may help explain why the state's other Republican Senator, 
     Christopher S. Bond, joined Ashcroft in opposing Judge White 
     on the floor--after having introduced him to the Judiciary 
     Committee last year as ``a man of the highest integrity and 
     honor,'' with the ``qualifications and character traits'' to 
     be a federal judge.
       But it turns out that Ashcroft himself orchestrated some of 
     the police opposition. He faces a tough re-election battle 
     next year and seems to be running as Mr. Death Penalty 
     against the man who appointed Judge

[[Page 1239]]

     White--Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan. (Carnahan also supports 
     the death penalty.)
       Ashcroft urged at least two police groups to oppose White, 
     according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Carl Wolf, 
     president of the Missouri Police Chiefs Association, told the 
     newspaper that Ashcroft's office had called to solicit his 
     opposition. Wolf declined because his group does not comment 
     on judicial nominations. Besides, he said: ``I really have a 
     hard time seeing that [White's] against law enforcement. I've 
     always known him to be an upright, fine individual.''
       In short, the record shows that Judge White takes seriously 
     his duty both to enforce the death penalty and to ensure that 
     defendants get fair trials. It suggests neither that he's 
     ``pro-criminal'' nor that he's a liberal activist. What it 
     does suggest is courage.
       And while White may be more sensitive to civil liberties 
     than his Ashcroft appointed colleagues are, his opinions also 
     exude a spirit of moderation, care, and candor.
       Would the Republicans who voted against Ronnie White--most 
     of them in deference to Ashcroft and Bond--have treated an 
     otherwise identical white nominee any better?
       I doubt it. But by giving such transparently bogus reasons 
     for trashing a nominee who happens to be black--at a time 
     when statistics have already raised troubling questions about 
     the Senate's handling of minority nominees--Republicans 
     provoked suspicions not only among those who are profligate 
     in flinging charges of racism, but also among many fair-
     minded people.
       And those who claimed to have been ignorant of White's race 
     compounded insensitivity with obtuseness. Even if true, this 
     shows that they went into the first floor vote in 12 years to 
     reject a judicial nominee without listening to what their 
     Democratic colleagues were saying or learning anything about 
     the nominee's admirable life story.
       In an era of politicized law, as I wrote recently, the best 
     antidote for partisan gridlock over judicial nominees is for 
     Presidents to shun ideological crusaders and choose moderate 
     centrists. That's what President Clinton did here. And that's 
     why--race aside--the Senate's vote and the smearing of Judge 
     White were shameful acts of pettiness and partisanship.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Oct. 13, 1999]

                          Judge White's Judges

                          (By Benjamin Wittes)

       Anyone who believes that race played no role in the 
     Senate's rejection last week of the judicial nomination of 
     Ronnie White should read the case of Missouri v. Kinder. Sen. 
     John Ashcroft, the Missouri Republican who led the fight to 
     kill White's nomination to a federal district court vacancy 
     in his state, cited Kinder on the Senate floor as one of 
     three cases that showed not merely White's hostility to the 
     death penalty but his ``tremendous bent toward criminal 
     activity.''
       Ashcroft described White--the first African American to 
     serve on Missouri's Supreme Court--as willing to grant a new 
     trial to a clearly guilty rapist and murderer who had been 
     sentenced to death, because ``the trial judge had indicated 
     that he opposed affirmative action and had switched parties 
     based on that.'' This charge, if true, would indeed be 
     evidence that White had placed politics before the law. But 
     it is a gross distortion. The reality is that by using 
     White's well-reasoned dissent in Kinder as a cudgel against 
     him, Ashcroft provided as clear an example of racial politics 
     infecting the nomination process as one could ever hope to 
     see.
       Brian Kinder was tried in the court of an elected judge 
     named Earl R. Blackwell, At the time of the trial, Blackwell 
     was facing a reelection campaign. Six days before Kinder's 
     trial was to begin, Blackwell announced in a press release 
     that he was switching parties because he found ``repugnant'' 
     the Democratic Party's ``reverse-discriminatory quotas and 
     affirmative action.''
       The politics of the statement were not the problem. The 
     problem was its all-but-overt racism: ``The truth is that I 
     have noticed in recent years that the Democrat party places 
     far too much emphasis on representing minorities such as 
     homosexuals, people who don't want to work, and people with a 
     skin that's any color but white. . . . While minorities need 
     to be represented, of course, I believe the time has come for 
     us to place much more emphasis and concern on the hard-
     working taxpayers in this country.''
       Faced with a judge who had just gone on the record 
     contrasting minorities with hard-working taxpayers, Kinder--
     an unemployed black man--asked Blackwell to recuse himself. 
     The judge refused, saying he did not discriminate whether 
     individuals ``are yellow, red, white, black or polka dot.'' 
     Kinder, after his conviction, appealed, arguing that the 
     trial was invalid because recusal should have been mandatory.
       The surprising thing about this case is not that Ronnie 
     White voted to reverse the conviction but that he was the 
     only member of the Missouri Supreme Court--several of whose 
     judges were appointed by Ashcroft when he was the state's 
     governor--to stand up for the principle that a minority 
     defendant is entitled to a trial before a judge who does not 
     make public slurs against minority groups. Like Ashcroft, the 
     court majority pretended Blackwell was merely making a 
     political statement against affirmative action and concluded 
     that ``we do not agree that the statements in the press 
     release . . . would cause a reasonable person to question the 
     impartiality of the court.''
       White, in an opinion characterized by admirable restraint, 
     cut through this nonsense. ``No honest reading of 
     [Blackwell's statement] can show that it says anything other 
     than what it says: that minorities are not hard-working 
     taxpayers,'' he wrote. ``I doubt that any reasonable person 
     would think that a judge who makes provocative comments in a 
     campaign press release . . . would be able to scrupulously 
     set aside those views just because the judge dons a robe.'' 
     Because of this appearance problem, he argued, recusal was 
     required. And ``since the judge here failed to sustain the 
     motion that he recuse himself, Mr. Kinder must receive a new 
     trial before a judge whose impartiality is beyond reproach.''
       As a general matter, the White House and its allies 
     overstate the claim that minority and women nominees are 
     discriminated against in the confirmation process. Having 
     looked at many nominations, I am convinced that white men 
     with histories and records similar to those of the women and 
     minority nominees who get bogged down in the Senate would 
     also have problems. And race, to be sure, was not the 
     predominant factor in White's rejection, either. The politics 
     of the death penalty and the 2000 Missouri Senate race have 
     that dishonor.
       But if White was not rejected because he's black, it is 
     also impossible to read racial politics out of his rejection. 
     Consider what would have happened had White and Kinder both 
     been Jewish and had Kinder been tried before a judge who had 
     issued a press release denouncing the political parties' 
     support for Israel that included analogous language: ``While 
     Jews need to be represented, of course, I believe the time 
     has come for us to place much more emphasis and concern on 
     moral people who are not obsessed with money.''
       No senator would dare argue that an appeals court judge who 
     insisted that such overt hostility to Jews compelled a new 
     trial--even for a guilty defendant--should be kept off the 
     federal bench for having done so. To argue that the Kinder 
     case is reason to keep Ronnie White off the bench is no less 
     outrageous--just a little more socially acceptable.

  Mr. LEAHY. I yield to the Senator from Indiana.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bunning). The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. BAYH. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I convey my thanks and 
gratitude to my colleague from Vermont for his extraordinary leadership 
on this matter of utmost public importance. He has written another 
honorable chapter in the history of this body, and I am privileged to 
serve with him, as was my father privileged to serve before me.
  I rise today as someone who was invited to Austin, TX, several weeks 
before the new year to discuss with our new President the cause of 
bipartisanship when it comes to improving the quality of our public 
schools.
  I rise as someone who was in the White House several nights ago to 
discuss with the President bipartisanship when it comes to improving 
the quality of health care.
  I rise as someone who wants to work with this President to enact a 
fiscally responsible tax cut.
  I rise as someone who shares his conviction that faith-based 
organizations have much to contribute to the welfare and well-being of 
our country.
  I rise as someone who deplores the gridlock in recent years and 
politics of personal destruction and yearns to return to bipartisanship 
and principled compromise for the sake of the United States of America.
  Because of all these things and all we can accomplish together, I 
also rise to express my opposition to the President's nomination of 
John Ashcroft to be the next Attorney General of the United States of 
America.
  Let me say at the beginning I do not believe in pointing fingers or 
calling names. Some of the things that have been said about Mr. 
Ashcroft, such as he is a racist, are, frankly, not true, and unfair, 
and for that I have deep regret. We need more civility in this town. 
Frankly, I wished Mr. Ashcroft himself practiced more civility when he 
had the privilege of gracing this Chamber. But he is the wrong man for 
this job.
  He is the wrong man for several reasons: First, the unique character 
of the Justice Department. Mr. Ashcroft has said he will enforce the 
law, and I am sure that is true, but it begs the central question: What 
does Mr. Ashcroft

[[Page 1240]]

consider the law to be? The law is not carved in stone and not subject 
to difference of opinion or dispute. Very able lawyers can have heated 
differences of opinion about what the law means, and in the Justice 
Department each and every day, hundreds of decisions, or thousands of 
decisions, will be made--some of which the public will never be aware--
about which there are varying interpretations of the law. What will 
happen in those cases? It will be Mr. Ashcroft's interpretation; it 
will be Mr. Ashcroft's discretion; it will be Mr. Ashcroft's law that 
will be put into effect for the American people.
  I have no doubt whatsoever that he will bring some of his more 
strident views to bear on that office in ways that will cause great 
conflict and controversy for this President and the people of our 
country.
  I think about the Supreme Court. We are not dealing with a Supreme 
Court nominee here, but before my colleagues cast their vote, I ask how 
they would vote if Mr. Ashcroft had been nominated for the Supreme 
Court of the United States because, in many ways, the Attorney General 
has as much or more discretion as does a member of the U.S. Supreme 
Court. At least before a decision of the Supreme Court is handed down, 
a Justice must get four of his or her colleagues to agree. Very often, 
the Attorney General of the United States can make unilateral decisions 
and interpretations of the law.
  At least the Supreme Court is bound to some degree by precedent. The 
Attorney General very often addresses entirely new areas of the law for 
which there is no precedent, giving more discretion and more free rein 
to the views and ideology of that individual. In Mr. Ashcroft's case, I 
believe that will not serve our country well.
  I have been troubled by some of his behavior, and it has been 
outlined in the hearings Senator Leahy and my colleague, Chuck Schumer, 
who just left, so ably outlined in the Judiciary Committee, but I want 
to particularly mention the issue of Ronnie White.
  I disagree with those who say Mr. Ashcroft's opposition to Judge 
White was racially based. I do not believe that to be true. I believe 
it was based upon prior political disagreements when Judge White served 
in the State legislature--but, frankly, when it comes to the Attorney 
General of the United States engaging in political payback, it is very 
troubling--and it was based also upon Mr. Ashcroft's desire to be 
reelected to this body, and the fact that he was willing to 
misinterpret the record of Judge White for his own political personal 
gain should concern us all. Not that political payback or sometimes 
interpreting or misinterpreting one's record is unique even to this 
Chamber and other political candidates across the country--it happens 
all the time--but it should not happen in the Justice Department of the 
United States, and it is not a characteristic we look for in the 
Attorney General of the United States of America.
  I was watching these proceedings last evening, and I will not name 
names, but I heard a speech of one of our colleagues who expressed his 
belief that behind opposition to Mr. Ashcroft was, in fact, an 
opposition to those who are devoutly Christian in their beliefs serving 
in positions of high public office. I say as one Senator, nothing could 
be further from the truth. On the contrary. I have a deep respect for 
Mr. Ashcroft's religious convictions. I think he should wear them as a 
badge of honor. His devout faith is something we can all look to as a 
source of pride on his part.
  It is his secular views and what implementation of those views would 
mean for the American people with more polarization, more divisiveness, 
and, as a result, more gridlock, that troubles me. It has nothing to do 
with his religious views, just as those of John Kennedy, Joe Lieberman, 
and others had absolutely nothing to do with their fitness for public 
service.
  We need to state unequivocally on the record his religious 
convictions have nothing to do with the reservations that at least this 
Senator--and I believe the majority of my colleagues who stand in 
opposition--has expressed.
  Finally, it is quite clear that before long, Mr. Ashcroft will become 
the next Attorney General of the United States of America. He can take 
one of two lessons from the proceedings of these last several weeks. On 
the one hand, he can draw from these proceedings the conclusion that he 
should pay no attention to his critics; that there was no basis to any 
of the objections raised to his nomination; that he needs no reason 
whatsoever to reach out to those who have expressed their concerns; and 
he can operate as Attorney General as he will.
  On the other hand, he can decide to take the criticism not personally 
but seriously. He can decide to reach out to those who have raised 
objections to his nomination. He can reach out to those who have grave 
concerns about how he conducts himself in the very important position 
of Attorney General of the United States. He can dedicate himself to 
proving those who raised objections to his nomination were, in fact, in 
error and those objections were ill-founded.
  It is that course of action that I hope he will take because in the 
final analysis, any Attorney General of the United States of America 
must dedicate himself to ensuring that our country lives out the full 
meaning of our creed: Liberty and justice for all Americans--all--
regardless of ideology, race, creed, or orientation.
  I hope it is that America to which Mr. Ashcroft will dedicate himself 
as the next Attorney General of the United States of America and prove 
that the concerns that have been expressed on the floor of this body 
were, in fact, misplaced.
  Mr. President, I appreciate the honor of addressing my colleagues 
once again. I yield the floor to my colleague from Vermont.
  Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Is somebody controlling time on our side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont actually has the time 
until 12:15.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, seeing my friend from New Mexico, I 
certainly yield to him.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico is recognized.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I am going to vote for John Ashcroft to 
be Attorney General of the United States. Let me first say, if you read 
what he has done in his life, he is eminently qualified. For those who 
are wondering whether the President of the United States has picked a 
person who can, in fact, be a real Attorney General for the United 
States, they can have no doubt about it. He graduated from the 
University of Chicago Law School, which is a very reputable university. 
In fact, it is one you do not get into unless they already know you are 
very bright. That means, if you look at that, he was trained to be a 
good lawyer.
  Frankly, we have had a lot of Attorneys General of the United States 
who were not good lawyers. There is no question he is trained and has 
proven that he is not simply good but very good at matters that pertain 
to law.
  Secondly, as a Senator from one of the sovereign States, I feel very 
concerned about the way this man is being treated and why the votes are 
being garnered against him because if I were from the State of Missouri 
instead of the State of New Mexico--and maybe I will transplant myself 
there just for the next 3 or 4 minutes--I would ask, what kind of 
people live in Missouri? I think I would conclude that, as you look 
across America, they are very good people, very diverse. They earn a 
living in very different ways, from agriculture to manufacturing. And 
guess what. They elected this man who has been under fire day after 
day, they elected him to be attorney general of their State two times. 
They elected him to be Governor twice. Then they elected him to be a 
Senator.
  Frankly, does anybody really believe the people of Missouri would 
elect a person who would discriminate against people in the State of 
the population that has been discussed here? Do they think the citizens 
of the State of Missouri would elect more than once a

[[Page 1241]]

man to be attorney general of their entire State, for all of their 
people, and that they have all been beguiled and fooled because he 
really was not a good attorney general; that he was prejudiced; that he 
was discriminatory against people; that he did not follow the law? That 
is pure bunk because he followed the law; he enforced the law. They 
elected him Governor twice.
  For this Senate to spend this much time trying to find little things 
about this man that are almost the kind of things you would not even 
ask anybody about--I looked at some of the questions Senators asked 
this man, and they are not only petty in some respects, but they 
deserve an answer, a simple answer: I don't remember. I can't 
understand. It's too long ago.
  They asked him questions about conversations 15 years ago with 
reference to one of the subject matters: Did you talk to so-and-so? 
Well, I do not remember.
  I am a reasonably good Senator, and I can tell you right now, I 
really remember things when I was 9, and 10, and 12, but I don't 
remember too well things that happened 2 years ago. And I bet you there 
are a lot of Senators like that. I will bet you there are a lot of 
great attorneys general in the United States like that.
  In fact, John Ashcroft enforced laws in his State as attorney general 
that were inconsistent with his beliefs. And you know what. Attorneys 
general across America are doing that all the time. They are elected by 
the people. The people know they differ in many respects. They go in, 
and what do they do? They follow the law. He is going to follow the 
law.
  The one difference versus many other Attorneys General, is that he is 
a real lawyer. He will be a real Attorney General. He will run that 
place because he has the intellectual capacity, the organizational 
ability, and the desire to be a great Attorney General.
  My friend and former colleague, Senator John Ashcroft, is fully 
qualified to serve as the next Attorney General of the United States, 
and I will vote to confirm his nomination.
  I served in this body with Senator Ashcroft for 6 years, and I know 
him as a man of great honesty and integrity. Unfortunately, honesty and 
integrity are often characteristics worthy of only secondary praise in 
today's society. Nevertheless, it is vitally important that the public 
has confidence that our Attorney General, who enforces our laws, is 
possessed of these traits.
  Of honesty, George Washington once remarked, ``I hope I shall always 
possess firmness of virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most 
enviable of all titles, the character of an Honest Man.'' It is my 
belief that Senator Ashcroft possesses such character and is worthy of 
the title.
  Senator Ashcroft graduated from Yale University and the University of 
Chicago Law School. He practiced law in his State of Missouri, and then 
served as Missouri's attorney general from 1976-1985. He was twice 
Missouri's Governor. He was later elected to the U.S. Senate, where he 
served with distinction on the Judiciary Committee.
  Throughout his career, he has had an impressive record on crime. 
During his tenure as Governor, he increased funding for local law 
enforcement, which resulted in a significant increase in full-time law 
enforcement officers.
  He helped enact tougher standards and sentencing for gun crimes, and 
led the fight against illegal drugs. His tough stance on drugs is 
important to me because we are seeking to eradicate a growing heroin 
problem in northern New Mexico.
  While Governor, total State and Federal spending for antidrug efforts 
in Missouri increased nearly 400 percent. In the Senate, he cosponsored 
the Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act of 1996.
  Despite his impressive credentials and proven record, Senator 
Ashcroft's opponents suggest that his religious and ideological beliefs 
will prevent him from enforcing our Nation's laws. It is true that he 
is a religious man with strong convictions. It is untrue that this will 
prevent him from carrying out his duties.
  Time and time again throughout his distinguished career, this nominee 
has enforced laws that run counter to his personal views. While serving 
as Missouri's attorney general, a Christian group that Senator Ashcroft 
favored was distributing Bibles on school grounds. After careful 
review, he issued an opinion stating that such activity violated the 
State constitution.
  On another matter, even though Senator Ashcroft is pro-life, he has 
unequivocally stated that he will investigate and prosecute any conduct 
by pro-life supporters at abortion clinics that violates the law. His 
prior actions support this assertion.
  He once asked pro-life marchers to sign a nonviolence pledge and to 
observe ordinary rules of courtesy with both ``friend and foe.'' It was 
concern about potential violence at clinics that led to his vote for 
Senator Schumer's amendment to the bankruptcy bill that made debts 
incurred as a result of abortion clinic violence non-dischargeable in 
bankruptcy.
  Other critics contend that this nominee is insensitive to minorities. 
His record on the whole indicates otherwise.
  This is a charge I take very seriously because my state of New Mexico 
has a large population of Native Americans and Hispanics. I am deeply 
concerned about the interests of these and other minority groups 
throughout the nation, and I have always worked to ensure that minority 
rights are protected. In fact, I have supported affirmative action 
programs in nearly every federal agency. I will hold this nominee's 
feet to the fire on minority issues.
  As Governor, Senator Ashcroft enacted Missouri's first hate crimes 
bill. He was also one of the nation's first governors to sign into law 
the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. In addition, he appointed numerous 
African Americans to the state bench, including the first African 
American ever selected associate circuit judge in St. Louis County.
  After this appointment, the Mound City Bar Association of St. Louis--
one of the oldest African-American Bar Associations in the United 
States--said of then-Governor Ashcroft:

       Your appointment of attorney Hemphill demonstrated your 
     sensitivity, not only to professional qualifications, but 
     also to the genuine need to have a bench that is as diverse 
     as the population it serves. . . . The appointment you have 
     just made and your track record for appointing women and 
     minorities are certainly positive indicators of your 
     progressive sense of fairness and equity. We commend you.

  This is not the description of a man who is insensitive to the needs 
of minorities.
  Senator Ashcroft's concern for minorities did not stop when he came 
to the U.S. Senate. As a matter of fact, while in the United States 
Senate, he and Senator Feingold convened the first Senate hearing on 
racial profiling, a practice Senator Ashcroft described as 
unconstitutional. He testified during his recent confirmation hearings 
that if confirmed he would make the elimination of racial profiling a 
priority.
  Senator Ashcroft supported 26 of 27 African-American judges who were 
nominated to the federal judiciary. However, he did not support 
Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie White. Nor did a majority of the 
U.S. Senate, 77 Missouri sheriffs, the National Sheriffs' Association, 
and other law enforcement groups. Senator Ashcroft's opposition to 
Judge White was based on a review of Judge White's dissenting opinions 
in death penalty cases.
  In my view, a person with honesty and integrity who has a strong law 
enforcement record and a demonstrated willingness to follow the law 
regardless of personal beliefs is exactly the type of individual that 
should lead the Justice Department. That's the Senator Ashcroft I know, 
and he will serve with distinction as Attorney General. He has my full 
support. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I am very pleased, and I congratulate the leadership 
here on our side and on their side for finally deciding we would vote 
today, not too long from now. I am hoping John Ashcroft will be 
confirmed. I do not know what this magical number of whether the 
Democrats can get 40 or 41

[[Page 1242]]

is all about, but I surely would not like to be a Senator on the other 
side who is told: We need your vote so we can get 41 votes against this 
man. What does that mean? Is that some reason to vote against this 
candidate? To me, if I were on that side and somebody told me: We only 
have 39 against him; we need you to make 40, and then told somebody 
else 41, I would say: Don't you think I ought to decide whether I want 
to vote for him? What does this 49, 40, or 41 mean? I don't understand 
it, except some think it means that is strength.
  Mr. LEAHY. Will the Senator yield on that point?
  Mr. DOMENICI. I am finished. I will yield the floor.
  It is strength, meaning you can defeat the next person President Bush 
sends up to be a Supreme Court judge. What is that about? Nobody knows 
who he is going send, what his philosophy is going to be. Pure 
speculation. Pure speculation. And they are asking Senators to vote so 
they can have that kind of message to those who are worried about 
candidates who are conservative like this man? I don't really think it 
matters too much if it is 39, 38, 40, or 41; he is going to be Attorney 
General.
  I tell you, I really predict he will be a good one, a very good one.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I realize we are on the time of the 
distinguished Senator from Utah, but I wonder if I might take 30 
seconds to respond to what my friend from New Mexico said.
  Mr. HATCH. Of course.
  Mr. LEAHY. One, I commend both sides for the way they have managed 
this. But I tell my friend from New Mexico, this Senator has not asked, 
urged, or cajoled any Senator to vote one way or the other. I have not 
lobbied one single Senator in this body or told them how I expect them 
to vote.
  The only time I have heard--I tell the Senator from New Mexico, if I 
could have his attention----
  Mr. DOMENICI. Sure.
  Mr. LEAHY. The only time I have heard numbers expressed was from the 
Republican leadership, when they stated before the hearings began--
before 1 minute of hearings was held--that all 50 Republican Senators 
were expected to, and would, vote for Senator Ashcroft, and, of course, 
plus Vice President Cheney, which would make a majority.
  I do also appreciate him saying that we now come to the vote. I point 
out this matter has come to a vote much quicker than the last contested 
Attorney General, which was in President Reagan's term, with a 
Republican-controlled Senate, where they took about 10 months to bring 
it to a vote. The nomination papers arrived Monday, we voted in the 
committee on Tuesday, and we are going to have a final vote on 
Thursday.
  Mr. HATCH addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, we are at the end of this particular 
debate. We are rapidly coming up to the time where we are all going to 
have to vote.
  It would be an understatement for me to say I have been disappointed 
in a number of our colleagues and the approaches they have taken 
towards this particular nominee.
  There has not been a person in the Senate who has not admitted that 
John Ashcroft is a person of integrity, decency, and honesty. He is a 
very religious man who believes in what he is doing.
  I believe some of the arguments that have been made have been pretty 
bad. They have distorted his record. Mischaracterizations have been 
throughout this matter. It has been really hard for me to sit here and 
listen to some of the arguments that have been made.
  Article VI of our Constitution, while requiring that Officers of the 
government swear to support the Constitution, assures us that ``no 
religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office 
or public Trust under the United States.'' I fear that with regard to 
the nomination of John Ashcroft to be Attorney General of the United 
States, we are coming very close to violating the spirit, if not the 
letter of that assurance.
  In response to a question I posed to Senator Ashcroft about the wide 
disparity of treatment accorded him as a person of faith and that 
accorded to Senator Lieberman when he was running for Vice President, 
and whether anything in his religious beliefs would interfere with his 
ability to apply the law as critics had charged, Senator Ashcroft said:

       In examining my understanding and my commitment and my 
     faith heritage, I'd have to say that my faith heritage 
     compels me to enforce the law and abide by the law rather 
     than to violate the law. And if in some measure somehow I 
     were to encounter a situation where the two came into 
     conflict so that I could not respond to this faith heritage 
     which requires me to enforce the law, then I would have to 
     resign.

  If anyone is looking for reassurances about whether Senator Ashcroft 
will enforce the law as written, I do not think anyone would have to 
look farther than this brief paragraph. Senator Ashcroft's critics and 
supporters uniformly agree that Senator Ashcroft is a man who takes his 
faith seriously. And if he says his faith compels him to abide by the 
law rather than violate it, I think his promise carries some weight. As 
he said in his opening statement, he takes his oath of office 
seriously, it being an oath taken enlisting the help and witness of God 
in so doing.
  Nevertheless, he has been attacked as a dangerous zealot by many of 
his opponents, who suggest that his faith will require him to violate 
the law, or as a liar who cannot be trusted when he says he will uphold 
the law, even when he disagrees with it, as he has in similar 
circumstances in the past. His critics cannot have it both ways. They 
seek to impose either a caricature of strong faith--a faith defined by 
them--followed with zealous determination in violation of law, or of 
one who flouts his faith convictions by lying about his principles to 
get through the confirmation process. Which is it? Apparently, his 
critics do not understand either a faith that transcends politics and 
power-grabs or the distinction between being an advocate for change in 
the law and being an impartial magistrate applying the law. This is not 
surprising, given the proclivity of many of his critics for a largely 
lawless, results-oriented, politicized approach to law, whether at the 
Justice Department, in the Courts, or elsewhere.
  I think the corrosive attacks on a qualified nominee because of his 
religious beliefs not only weakens our constitutional government, but 
also undermines the ability of citizens in our democracy to engage in a 
meaningful dialog with each other. When such attacks are made on the 
ground that a man's faithful conviction will prevent him from 
discharging the duties of his office, whole segments of our democracy 
are disenfranchised, and the American heritage of religious tolerance 
is betrayed.
  Strangely, though many have commented on these issues, some claim the 
inability to see any such religious attack on Senator Ashcroft and the 
large number of Americans who believe much of what he does. Following 
my question to Senator Ashcroft, Senator Leahy, the ranking Democrat on 
the Judiciary Committee, engaged in the following exchange with Senator 
Ashcroft:

       Mr. Leahy. I just would not want to leave one of the 
     questions from my friend from Utah to give the wrong 
     impression to the people here and just, sort of, make it very 
     clear. Have you heard any senator, Republican or Democrat, 
     suggest that there should be a religious test on your 
     confirmation?
       Mr. Ashcroft. No senator has said, ``I will test you,'' but 
     a number of senators have said, ``Will your religion keep you 
     from being able to perform your duties in office?''
       Mr. Leahy. I'm amazed at that.

  I have been amazed too, and I am not alone. I ask unanimous consent 
to have a sampling of editorials that have pointed out the religious 
test element in these attacks printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 19, 2001]

                           Ashes to Ashcroft

                         (By James W. Skillen)

       Do deeply held religious convictions pose a threat to 
     government? May we trust a man like John Ashcroft, whose 
     outlook appears to be saturated by faith, to serve as U.S. 
     attorney general.

[[Page 1243]]

       It may seem odd, at first, that such a question is asked at 
     all. Odd that sincere religious belief--at least when it 
     comes to holding public office--should be counted as a 
     liability, whereas agnosticism and atheism are presumed to 
     pose no problem whatsoever. But there is a logic to the 
     question--if indeed there is a reasonable concern that some 
     higher authority will interfere with the republic's human 
     ones.
       But is there a reasonable concern? That depends. There are 
     religions, and then there are religions. Clearly a man whose 
     God calls for him to overthrow the American system of 
     government would disqualify himself for public office 
     immediately, as would a theocrat for whom clerical edicts 
     would trump federal and state laws.
       But of course John Ashcroft is not this sort of man. He is, 
     rather, the kind of Christian whose belief wholeheartedly 
     supports democracy, the rule of law and religious freedom. To 
     put it starkly: He believes that his savior and lord, Jesus 
     Christ, approves of the American system of government.
       But that won't save him from his critics, who cringe at 
     such a claim, since they don't think the name of Jesus should 
     be used in a political conversation. But this is a kind of 
     bigotry. We easily accept the idea that broad liberal 
     sentiments inspire public service and that secular, 
     humanitarian ideals are harmonious with American democracy. 
     Why not religious convictions too?
       Of course, any truths that anyone holds dear--secular or 
     divinely ordained--must exist in the real world on the same 
     footing as others, under constitutional provisions that hold 
     for everyone. But there is nothing in Mr. Ashcroft's record 
     to suggest that he thinks otherwise.
       So why do some people still find his religion so 
     threatening? The answer, I think, is almost philosophical. It 
     has been standard modern practice to speak of religion in 
     isolation, as something separate. Thus we hear of ``religion 
     and society'' or ``religion and politics.'' This manner of 
     speech has its roots in the European Enlightenment's 
     conviction that Christianity was a kind of residual entity 
     that would soon be made obsolete by the progress of science 
     and reason.
       The U.S. was founded at a time when the Enlightenment was 
     beginning to win American converts. Thomas Jefferson 
     expressed the new moralism of the Enlightenment when, in a 
     letter to his nephew, Peter Carr (Aug. 10, 1787), he 
     encouraged him to read the Bible. If such reading, Jefferson 
     wrote to Carr, ``ends in a belief that there is no God, you 
     will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and 
     pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others 
     which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe 
     there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his 
     eye, and that he approves you, will be a vast additional 
     incitement.''
       From this point of view, religion is judged by its 
     pragmatic usefulness--its power to inspire public virtue. 
     Whether God exists, whether faith can be felt to be 
     personally true, does not matter.
       The problem with Mr. Ashcroft, in the eyes of those who 
     have been influenced more by the Enlightenment than by 
     Christianity, is that he reveres God as truly superior to 
     himself and, in a moral sense, to the republic. That is, he 
     takes religion too seriously for a modern man. He does not 
     treat it as either a utilitarian devise or a merely private 
     affair.
       Of course, if Mr. Ashcroft's political convictions on, say, 
     abortion were the same as those who now fault him, his 
     critics would applaud his belief as an incitement to virtue. 
     But he holds views contrary to their own. How to explain his 
     unwillingness to join their moral majority? Disparage his 
     religion as something dangerous--something out of the 
     mainstream that belongs to a darker, or less ``enlightened,'' 
     age.
       And the best way to do this is to suggest, implausibly, 
     that Mr. Ashcroft is blinded by his faith, that it is so 
     illiberal that it renders him unable to honor his obligations 
     as a public official, to revere the Constitution, to obey the 
     law it is his job to enforce. But it is an absurd suggestion: 
     After all, George W. Bush will put his hand on the Bible 
     tomorrow as he takes the oath of office, just like other 
     presidents before him. Somehow, the republic will survive, 
     and perhaps even prosper.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Times, Jan. 17, 2001]

                          Ashcroft Under Fire

       If John Ashcroft is to be known as an extremist because he 
     is a man of faith; if, as his former Senate colleague Charles 
     Schumer repeatedly intimates, he is deemed ill-equipped to 
     enforce the law--even incapable of knowing whether he is 
     enforcing the law--because of his ideological and 
     philosophical beliefs; if the man is to be labeled a racist 
     because, as a senator from Missouri, he opposed one black 
     judicial nominee while supporting 26; if all these wholly 
     spurious charges are allowed to stand in a disgraceful 
     attempt to, first, smear an honorable and supremely 
     distinguished man and then defeat his nomination for attorney 
     general, it would become clear that the American mainstream 
     is a sterile, even hostile environment.
       To be sure, the Senate Judiciary Committee, under Sen. 
     Patrick Leahy's leadership this week, seems to be just such 
     an inhospitable place. Even before Mr. Ashcroft gave a jot of 
     testimony, answered any questions, explained a single point 
     of view or action, or even said howdy-do, the Senate 
     Democrats had bayonets affixed and were on the attack. In an 
     ill-mannered rant harkening back to that science-fictional, 
     if slanderously effective attack on Robert Bork's Supreme 
     Court nomination, Sen. Ted Kennedy depicted an Attorney 
     General Ashcroft as someone who would ``advance his personal 
     views in spite of the laws of the land''--the baseless, 
     indeed, fanciful implication being that Mr. Ashcroft would 
     serve as some kind of Cabinet-level desperado in the new Bush 
     administration. Of course, Mr. Kennedy, reprising his oft-
     played role as Democratic heavy in the confirmation hearings 
     of Republican nominees, was just warming up.
       Mr. Schumer, if more cordial, was hardly more temperate in 
     his opening remarks, injecting a note of condescension into 
     the hearings by wondering how such an ``impassioned and 
     zealous advocate'' as Mr. Ashcroft could, as attorney 
     general, ``just turn it off? That may be an impossible 
     task,'' said Mr. Schumer, implying that Mr. Ashcroft is 
     constitutionally--religiously?--incapable of enforcing the 
     law when it conflicts with his convictions.
       One might have thought that Mr. Ashcroft had pricked most 
     of the grossly--and grotesquely--inflated charges against him 
     with his compelling opening testimony during which he 
     emphasized his commitment to enforcing the law as written for 
     all Americans, regardless of race, color or creed. Hardly 
     striking an orthodox conservative pose, Mr. Ashcroft spoke of 
     his commitment, not to a color-blind society, but rather to 
     diversity and integration. He elaborated on his record of 
     supporting minority appointments and nominees throughout his 
     career, and he spoke of his opposition to racial profiling. 
     On the incendiary issue of abortion, Mr. Ashcroft declared 
     that, consistent with previous Republican attorneys general, 
     he believed Roe vs. Wade to have been wrongly decided, but 
     affirmed his unwavering acceptance of the landmark cases 
     upholding abortion's legality.
       So what's the liberals' problem? Does anyone still take 
     seriously the charges of racism--even after, say, the brother 
     of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers came out for Mr. 
     Ashcroft this week? Does anyone--even a Senate Democrat--
     genuinely worry that Mr. Ashcroft would not enforce abortion 
     laws even after learning, for example, that he has supported 
     a ban on violence against abortion clinics? Mr. Ashcroft has 
     made it clear that, as attorney general, he would uphold the 
     Constitution and the laws of the nation. After eight years of 
     an increasingly degraded Justice Department, that would be--
     may we say it?--the department's salvation.
                                  ____


                [From the New York Times, Jan. 17, 2001]

                         A Christian, a Citizen

                         (By Robert A. Sirico)

       Grand Rapids, MI.--Some of the objections to the John 
     Ashcroft nomination for attorney general hint that the 
     problem with his conservative politics is that it is rooted 
     in his Christian faith.
       It is true that Mr. Ashcroft has made it clear that he is 
     Christian and that his religious beliefs inform his judgment 
     of the world. But why shouldn't someone who holds this 
     particular belief be qualified to lead the Justice 
     Department?
       We must remember our country's progressive tradition of 
     religious tolerance. In our nation's history, certain states 
     subjected public officeholders to certain religious tests. 
     For instance, in 1961, the Supreme Court struck down a 
     Maryland law that required public officials to swear to a 
     belief in the existence of God. Progressives fought valiantly 
     against these religious tests, and it would be a grave error 
     to promote a new religious test that would in effect block 
     committed Christians from public service.
       And yet some understandable questions remain. From the time 
     of ancient Israel and the early church, believers have held 
     that there is a law higher than those issued and enforced by 
     government. Its source is transcendent and binds people's 
     souls in a way in which statutory law cannot. Indeed, the 
     idea of a natural law that transcends the political process 
     is a powerful argument against tyranny.
       Every serious believer and every conscientious person in 
     public office must balance respect for law with the dictates 
     of conscience. Many have disagreed profoundly with certain 
     policies and wondered whether their religious commitments 
     permitted them to cooperate in enforcing those policies.
       Surely, as attorney general, Mr. Ashcroft would also have 
     to struggle with this conundrum--particularly when it comes 
     to abortion, which he opposes. But it is perfectly within 
     Christian belief that one can participate in an essentially 
     just system that sometimes produces unwise laws that must be 
     enforced, as Mr. Ashcroft would do. That is at least as 
     principled a position as that of those Catholic politicians 
     who personally oppose abortion but vigorously support Roe v. 
     Wade.
       George W. Bush's response to the attacks on Mr. Ashcroft 
     hints at the distinction between administering the law and 
     advocating legislation. He says that as attorney general, Mr. 
     Ashcroft will enforce, not interpret, the

[[Page 1244]]

     law, until such time as Congress changes them. Presumably 
     that also includes the nation's laws on abortion.
       The Bible, in Chapter 13 of Romans, tells Christians that 
     ``the powers that be are ordained of God.'' That passage has 
     never been held to mean that every regime governs according 
     to God's will. But the phrase does imply that Christians face 
     no moral obligation to flee from public life merely because a 
     nation's laws do not always perfectly conform to the highest 
     moral standards.
       We are a nation that holds firm to the conviction that a 
     person's religious commitments, or lack thereof, need not bar 
     him or her from public life. The Ashcroft nomination provides 
     an opportunity to reaffirm the best of this old liberal 
     virtue of tolerance.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Jan. 19, 2001]

                     Disqualified by His Religion?

                        (By Charles Krauthammer)

       A senator is nominated for high office. He's been reelected 
     many times statewide. He has served admirably as his state's 
     attorney general. He is devout, speaking openly and proudly 
     about his religious faith. He emphasizes the critical role of 
     religion in underpinning both morality and constitutional 
     self-government. He speaks passionately about how his 
     politics are shaped by his deeply held religious beliefs.
       Now: If his name is Lieberman and he is Jewish, his 
     nomination evokes celebration. if his name is Ashcroft and he 
     is Christian, his nomination evokes a hue and cry about 
     ``divisiveness'' and mobilizes a wall-to-wall liberal 
     coalition to defeat him.
       Just two months ago I addressed a gathering of the Jewish 
     Theological Seminary arguing that the Lieberman candidacy--
     the almost universal applause his nomination received, the 
     excitement he generated when he spoke of his religious 
     faith--had created a new consensus in America. Liberals have 
     long vilified the ``religious right'' for mixing faith and 
     politics and insisting that religion has a legitimate place 
     in the public square. No longer. The nomination of Lieberman 
     to the second highest office in the country by the country's 
     liberal political party would once and for all abolish the 
     last remaining significant religious prejudice in the 
     country--the notion that highly religious people are unfit 
     for high office because they confuse theology with politics 
     and recognize no boundary between church and state. After 
     Lieberman, liberals would simply be too embarrassed to return 
     to a double standard.
       How wrong I was. The nomination of a passionate and devout 
     Christian for attorney general set off the old liberal anti-
     religious reflexes as if Joe Lieberman had never existed.
       Of course, the great anti-Ashcroft revolt is not framed as 
     religious. The pretense is that it is about issues. Hence 
     this exchange during John Ashcroft's confirmation hearing:
       Sen. Patrick Leahy: ``Have you heard any senator, 
     Republican or Democrat, suggest that there should be a 
     religious test on your confirmation?''
       John Ashcroft: ``No senator has said `I will test you.' But 
     a number of senators have said, `Will your religion keep you 
     from being able to perform your duties in office?' ''
       Sen. Leahy: ``All right, well, I'm amazed at that.''
       At the clumsiness, perhaps. No serious politician is 
     supposed to admit openly that Ashcroft's religion bothers 
     him. The religious test that is implied is not just un-
     American, it is grossly unconstitutional.
       The ostensible issues are abortion and racial preferences, 
     both of which Ashcroft fundamentally opposes. But are they 
     really? In a country so divided on these issues, can one 
     seriously argue that opposing abortion and racial preferences 
     is proof of extremism? It would be odd indeed if the minority 
     of Americans who believe in racial preferences and the 
     minority who believe in abortion-on-demand were to define the 
     American mainstream. In fact, under these issues lies a 
     suspicion, even a prejudice, about the fitness of a truly 
     religious conservative for high office. ``Christian Right'' 
     is a double negative in the liberal lexicon. It is meant to 
     make decent Americans cringe at the thought of some religious 
     wing nut enforcing the laws. Torquemada at Agriculture 
     perhaps. But not Justice, God forbid.
       To the anti-Ashcroft coalition, the Christian Right--
     numbering at least 30 million, by the way--is some kind of 
     weird fringe group to whom bones are thrown by otherwise 
     responsible Republicans to induce them to return to their 
     caves. Politically, they are a foreign body to be ignored, 
     bought off or suppressed. Hence the charge that the very 
     appointment of a man representing this constituency is, in 
     and of itself, divisive.
       Hence the salivation when news broke that there was a tape 
     of Ashcroft's commencement address at Bob Jones University. 
     In it, he declared that Jesus is a higher authority than 
     Caesar. That sent some fundamentalist church-state 
     separationists into apoplexy. This proved, said Barry Lynn, 
     the executive director of Americans United for Separation of 
     Church and State, that Ashcroft ``has little or no 
     appreciation for the constitutional separation of church and 
     state'' and thus is disqualified from serving as attorney 
     general.
       What Ashcroft did was not merely to state the obvious--that 
     the American experiment has always recognized its source in 
     the transcendent--but to restate in his own vernacular what 
     Joe Lieberman had been saying up and down the country 
     throughout the summer and fall.
       It was a great day when Joe Lieberman was nominated. and it 
     was even greater that he publicly rooted his most deeply held 
     political beliefs in his faith. It is rather ironic that we 
     now need to go through that same process for Ashcroft's 
     constituency of co-believers. When the Senate confirms him, 
     we will have overcome yet another obstacle in America's 
     steady march to religious toleration.

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, let me point to just a few instances of 
these amazing attacks on Senator Ashcroft, made on largely religious 
grounds, since he was nominated. In fairness to my colleagues in the 
Senate, they have tried to draw a distinction between the liberal 
pressure groups' attacks on Senator Ashcroft's religious views and my 
colleagues' questioning into his ``values'' or ``beliefs.'' But their 
wholesale adoption of the rest of the liberal interest group critique 
of John Ashcroft does suggest a connection between the objections, 
despite a generally more guarded rhetoric. However, I was disappointed 
that just this morning one of our colleagues was quoted in The New York 
Times as saying, ``he believed Mr. Ashcroft's `fundamental beliefs and 
values' would conflict with the attorney general's responsibility to 
enforce the law.'' NY Times, Feb. 1, 2001.
  Let me turn to the testimony of Professor James M. Dunn, who 
testified at our Senate hearings as an expert on religion issues. I 
begin here because Professor Dunn is the most explicit in his religious 
attack on Senator Ashcroft.
  Most attacks have been based on the divergence of his religious 
beliefs and a particular law, such as abortion rights, or a suggestion 
that the strength of his deeply-held convictions will make it 
impossible for him to analyze the law dispassionately and apply it 
even-handedly. Professor Dunn makes his attack explicitly on religious 
grounds. On a personal note, I am deeply disappointed that a Divinity 
Professor, who has worked on important religious liberty legislation 
with me and other people of conscience and people of faith, would use 
such harsh and intemperate language to attack a person of good faith, 
apparently over a policy difference.
  Professor Dunn says explicitly what others have coyly and carefully 
implied. He says, and I quote what is essentially the thesis statement 
of his testimony before the Judiciary Committee: ``The long history of 
Senator Ashcroft's identification with and approval of the political 
agenda of religious, right-wing extremism in this country convinces me 
that he is utterly unqualified and must be assumed to be unreliable for 
such a trust.''
  Let me quote that point again: ``The long history of Senator 
Ashcroft's identification with and approval of . . . religious, right-
wing extremism in this country convinces [Professor Dunn] that he is 
utterly unqualified and must be assumed unreliable for such a trust.''
  That is about as baldly as the matter can be put, John Ashcroft is 
``utterly unqualified'' and ``unreliable'' because of his ``religious, 
right-wing extremism.''
  As if the name-calling were not enough, to make this an even more 
stunning assertion, the case Professor Dunn offers to prove this 
perceived ``extremism'' is that John Ashcroft was the ``principal 
architect'' of the so-called ``charitable choice'' legislation which 
was passed by the Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1996.
  To suggest that duly passed legislation, adopted by two branches of 
government controlled by different political parties is outside the 
mainstream is simply ludicrous, and suggests that the one outside the 
mainstream is not Senator Ashcroft, but rather his critics. This is a 
point that could be made on a number of policy fronts.
  This critique is particularly odd when both major-party presidential 
candidates have been talking up the concept of charitable choice very 
recently in their campaigns.
  I am disappointed when policy disagreements deteriorate into name-
calling, but considering the source I am

[[Page 1245]]

particularly disappointed. I would hope that the United States Senate 
would never countenance such attacks in the consideration of this, or 
any other, nominee. I hope no weight will be given to such intemperate 
vitriol, nor more guarded attacks made in the same spirit. I hope that 
none of my colleagues would join in such attacks, whether explicitly 
stated or couched in more careful language.
  I am glad that at least Professor Dunn's clear statement can put to 
rest the question of whether Senator Ashcroft is being attacked in part 
on his religious beliefs. Dunn is not alone, either. For example, Barry 
Lynn, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in 
attacking Senator Ashcroft's nomination also cites charitable choice--
again, a law adopted by two branches of government controlled by two 
different parties--as an instance of Ashcroft's ``extreme views.'' And 
to underscore the broader point, Lynn points to the apparently decisive 
fact that ``Religious Right leaders find Ashcroft's fundamentalist 
Christian world view and his far-right political outlook appealing.'' 
Let us be clear here: the charge is guilt by association with religious 
people.
  As a number of my colleagues have suggested that the nominee might 
want to apologize for some of his associations or take the opportunity 
to dissociate himself from them, I would invite my colleagues to show a 
similar indignation for these attacks on people of faith, and 
dissociate themselves from these intolerant statements, unless they too 
would like their silence to be considered approval of such intolerance. 
Perhaps there needs to be greater sensitivity shown here.
  In addition to such explicit attacks, others attack Senator Ashcroft 
because his religious beliefs can be viewed as diverging from the legal 
results favored by far left liberal interest groups.
  For example, in the area of abortion, Ms. Gloria Feldt, the President 
of Planned Parenthood Federation of America criticized Senator Ashcroft 
for ``his belief that personhood begins at fertilization,'' saying 
``his actions and statements over time with regard to choice and family 
planning represent no mere commentary on policy decisions of the day, 
but rather illustrate deeply held beliefs that put him at odds with the 
overwhelming majority of Americans.'' She went on to argue that his 
view is ``one of the most extreme positions among those who oppose a 
woman's right to make her own reproductive choices, John Ashcroft 
actually believes that personhood begins . . . at the moment that sperm 
meets egg, the moment of fertilization.'' Well, call it extreme if you 
will--that word is a hobby horse of the far left liberal groups who 
oppose this nominee--but I understand that is the position of a number 
of churches, including the Catholic church. What is striking and 
chilling about this attack is the implication that anyone who holds 
this belief, including believing members of many churches, including 
the millions of believing Catholics, are unfit for the office of 
Attorney General because of their ``extreme positions.'' Surely, the 
Senate cannot take the position that faithful Americans who adhere to 
the pro-life doctrines of their churches, or even those who are pro-
life on secular grounds, are unfit for office because of this view.
  Where all of this leads is down one of two roads. Either the 
political views of about half of the country--including a duly elected 
pro-life President--make one unfit for office, which clearly cannot be 
right in a democracy. Or religious people who actually believe their 
religions are unfit for public office, which clearly cannot be right in 
a tolerant and pluralistic society founded in part on religious 
freedom.
  Or there is a third path. That path is the one John Ashcroft's 
opponents have added most recently to counter his assurances that he 
will follow the law, even where he disagrees with it. That path is to 
try to brand as a liar a person who, while disagreeing on policy, 
promises to honor the law as the policy-makers have made it. This path 
attacks the very notion of dispassionate analysis and even-handed 
application of the law.
  Besides undermining our basic assumptions supporting the rule of law, 
this position raises two additional objections. First, it unfairly puts 
the nominee in a lose-lose position where he cannot ever win the 
argument because if he disagrees with his opponents on policy he is 
branded a dangerous extremist, but if he disarms the policy dispute by 
acknowledging his role as enforcer of policy made by others, his 
veracity is called into question. There seems to be no way to satisfy 
these critics without violating the oath to uphold the law; they seem 
to want a promise that he will make up new liberal law in his 
enforcement position.
  Besides being little more than a desperate attempt to justify 
opposition under any circumstances, this path leads to a second, and 
more chilling result for religious tolerance, namely that of Senator's 
judging a nominee on the basis of their views of the nominee's 
religious faith and that faith's priorities. John Ashcroft responds to 
those who criticize him for his beliefs about abortion and the 
beginning of life, for example, by stating that his religion requires 
him to follow the law as written when he is filling an enforcement 
role, and his oath to do that will be binding on him. Those who 
challenge his veracity on this point are picking and choosing which of 
Senator Ashcroft's religious beliefs they feel are genuine or which 
religious principle has priority for him. I think this moves 
dangerously close to the line of imposing a religious test on a 
nominee.
  Oddly, to justify questions approaching this line, one Judiciary 
Committee member suggested that is was perfectly appropriate to inquire 
whether a Quaker could faithfully discharge the office of Secretary of 
Defense. I am not sure we should be so blithely assured that it is 
appropriate to inquire about a nominee's religious beliefs and then 
judge that nominee based on what we think their religion requires of 
them. That robs the individual conscience of its freedom and robs the 
executive of the choice of cabinet team based on a Senator's own 
projection of what a nominee's religious code ought to be. Perhaps we 
can ask a nominee the general question whether there is anything that 
would keep them from fulfilling their duties, but I do not think it 
appropriate to assume that someone is unfit for a job because we have 
preconceptions about what their sect believes and then criticize them 
if their answers do not fit our preconceptions of what they should 
believe. We need to tread very carefully here. We would do well in such 
matters to give the benefit of the doubt to the nominee. We have 
certainly given the benefit of the doubt to the last president when we 
had qualms about the quality or credentials of some of his nominees, or 
their policy positions. But we owe a special duty to resolve doubts in 
favor of a nominee when questions stem from our assumptions about a 
nominee's religious beliefs, especially in the face of the nominee's 
contradiction of our assumptions.
  Mr. President, I think we would all do well to remember what we know 
about John Ashcroft, and not be influenced by a caricature painted by 
those extreme groups whose distortions of this honorable man are driven 
largely by their own narrow political interests. We know him to be a 
man of integrity, a man of his word. A man who reveres American 
constitutionalism, democracy, pluralism, and equality before the law. 
We know John Ashcroft is the sort of person whose word is his bond. And 
if his religion is relevant, it speaks for him as a person who will 
discharge the office of Attorney General with honor and dignity, with 
impartiality, according to the law established by the constitutional 
process he reveres.
  I think if we examine our hearts, we will find nothing that 
disqualifies him to be Attorney General. And we cannot, in good 
conscience, say that all those Americans who believe as he does are 
outside the mainstream of American opinion. No, they are solidly within 
the history of American pluralism and freedom, including religious 
freedom. We know John Ashcroft will faithfully discharge his duties and 
honor his oath of office, sworn as he points out ``so help [him] God.'' 
And we

[[Page 1246]]

know this no matter what the liberal pressure groups assert. I hope we 
will similarly honor our oaths, rejecting what has become in essence a 
religious test for this nominee, and vote to confirm this honorable man 
to the post of Attorney General.
  My colleague Senator Kennedy suggests that to oppose court-ordered 
busing makes a person against integration. But nothing could be farther 
from the truth. I think most people highly abhor racial segregation. 
However, the remedy for such segregation is extremely controversial. 
Mr. Bob Woodson testified that a significant majority of African-
Americans opposes busing for integration. And it is no wonder, given 
that many of these programs have been a dismal failure. They may have 
moved some children out of city schools, but they have done little to 
improve inner-city schools.
  I would like to address several allegations that continue to be made 
relating to Senator Ashcroft's involvement with school desegregation 
cases in Missouri. First, let me say that I do not in the least condone 
segregation in St. Louis or Kansas City or anywhere else. It is a 
shameful legacy that must be dealt with appropriately.
  Second, while the costs of the desegregation program were exorbitant, 
this is not the only criticism to be made of the plans. The primary 
argument repeatedly made by Senator Ashcroft is that the State was 
never found liable for an inter-district violation.
  Senator Kennedy has referred to an 8th Circuit decision that he 
argues found the State of Missouri guilty of an inter-district 
violation. But a circuit court cannot make such a factual finding. 
Rather, this is a finding that must be made only by a trial court.
  The fact that the State was never found liable for an inter-district 
violation is shown by the fact that throughout 1981 and 1982, the 
parties were preparing for trial on the very question of inter-district 
liability.
  So again, I emphasize that it is true and correct to say that the 
State was never found liable for an inter-district violation.
  Although the State was not found liable for an inter-district 
violation, it was required by the district court to pay for a 
settlement reached by the suburbs and the City of St. Louis. This order 
by the district court was likely unconstitutional under the Supreme 
Court's decision in Milliken.
  Opposing these court orders for a plan that was constitutionally 
suspect, expensive, and ineffective, does not make Senator Ashcroft an 
opponent of desegregation.
  Indeed, the plan as implemented has been a dismal failure. Test 
scores actually declined from 1990 to 1995. Scores on the standard 
achievement test went from 36.5 to 31.1 at a time when the national 
mean was 50. And the graduation rate has remained at a dismal 30 
percent.
  To question Senator Ashcroft's integrity over such a complicated and 
controversial issue is to seriously distort his record and disbelieve 
his sworn testimony.
  Senator Ashcroft acted with great probity as a representative of the 
State of Missouri. He supports integration and deplores racism.
  As one who feels very strongly about drug issues, I am pleased to say 
I have been working with Senator Leahy on legislation dealing with drug 
treatment and prevention, and we are going to get that done this year.
  I feel compelled to respond to some of the criticism launched at 
Senator Ashcroft yesterday regarding his stance on drug treatment. Some 
have questioned Senator Ashcroft's dedication to investing in drug 
prevention and treatment programs in the battle against drug abuse and 
addiction.
  Indeed, yesterday when giving a statement in opposition to Senator 
Ashcroft, one Senator suggested that Senator Ashcroft opposed investing 
in drug treatment. That simply is not true. Senator Ashcroft's record 
in the Senate proves that he placed a lot of faith in drug prevention 
and treatment.
  He has always believed, as do many of us, that America's drug 
problems can only be conquered through a comprehensive, balanced 
approach consisting of interdiction and law enforcement efforts as well 
as prevention and treatment.
  It is true that in 1998, Senator Ashcroft called on the Clinton 
administration to continue the ban on federal funding for clean-needle 
programs, stating ``the nation's leaders have a fundamental 
responsibility to call Americans to their highest and best.'' Providing 
clean needles to drug addicts, Senator Ashcroft reasoned, was analogous 
to ``giving bullet proof vests to bank robbers.'' He argued that such a 
policy would ``hurt kids, tear apart families, and damage the 
culture.'' Senator Ashcroft went on to state that providing needles to 
addicts ``is accommodating us at our lowest and least.'' In light of 
the fact that heroin use among eighth graders had doubled and that 
marijuana use was up 99 percent at the time when the Clinton 
administration was considering lifting the ban on federal funding for 
needle exchange programs, Senator Ashcroft concluded that ``America 
deserve[d] better,'' and that its leaders needed to set ``a higher 
standard than providing clean needles for drug users.''
  Some have mischaracterized Senator Ashcroft's record on drug 
treatment. I have complete confidence in saying that the majority of 
Americans agree with Senator Ashcroft. Providing drug addicts with 
clean needles is not the most effective drug prevention or treatment.
  Just last session, Senator Ashcroft authored and introduced S. 486, a 
comprehensive bill that attacked the methamphetamine problem on several 
fronts, including the prevention and treatment fronts. S 486 was a 
balanced drug bill that contained significant and innovative prevention 
and treatment provisions. For example, the bill: (1) Expanded the 
National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network which conducts 
research and clinical trials with treatment centers relating to drug 
abuse and addiction and other biomedical, behavioral and social issues 
related to drug abuse and addiction; (2) authorized $10 million in 
grants to States for treatment of methamphetamine and amphetamine 
addiction; (3) authorized $15 million to fund grants to public and 
nonprofit private entities to carry out school-based and community-
based programs concerning the dangers of abuse of and addiction to 
methamphetamine and other illicit drugs; and (4) required HHS to 
conduct a study on the development of medications for the treatment of 
addiction to amphetamine and methamphetamine.
  Another important treatment provision, included in S. 486, offered an 
innovative approach to how drug addicted patients could seek and obtain 
treatment by creating a decentralized system of treating heroin addicts 
with a new generation of antiaddiction medications. This provision, 
which was added to S. 486 and was fully supported by Senator Ashcroft, 
was taken from a bill introduced by myself and Senators Levin and 
Biden. I am sure Senator Levin would agree that Senator Ashcroft's 
sponsorship and support for this very provision, not to mention the 
countless other provisions included in the bill, demonstrate this 
commitment to utilizing and funding effective prevention and treatment 
programs in the fight against illicit drug abuse and addiction. Senator 
Ashcroft's record proves he believes in prevention and treatment 
programs and his views on one particular, and I must say controversial, 
form of a treatment program.
  There are so many things I could bring up that have been distortions, 
misrepresentations, and downright falsehoods stated on this floor and 
in our committee about Senator Ashcroft--especially by outside groups. 
The sheer volume is mind-boggling to me.
  I recall the Golden Rule of ``do unto others as you would have them 
do unto you.''
  I wonder how many people would like to be treated like Senator 
Ashcroft has been treated by some of our colleagues here and some of 
these outside groups, distorting his record, trying to make him look 
bad--all in the good name of politics. I think it is wrong. Buddhists 
say it another way. Buddhists say, ``Do as you would be done by.'' It 
is very

[[Page 1247]]

similar. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
  How many of us would like to be treated like this? Here is a man who 
was elected attorney general of his State, who did his best to do that 
job, who enforced laws he didn't agree with. And he has a record that 
can be shown. He was selected by his peers--the other 49 attorneys 
general of the United States of America--to head the National Attorneys 
General Association. And we have people here saying he should not be 
Attorney General of the United States.
  You don't get elected by 49 other state attorneys general--Democrats 
and Republicans--unless you are a quality person. What is more, he 
became Governor of the great State of Missouri for 8 years. As Governor 
of the State of Missouri, he also became the head of the National 
Governors' Association elected by the other 49 Governors. I submit that 
you don't get elected chairman of the National Governors' Association 
unless you are a quality individual, of great substance, fair and 
decent, and you surely would not get elected if you were against 
desegregation. There is no way.
  Then he served 6 years in this Senate and I have never heard one 
person in this body say that he is not a man of integrity, decency, and 
honor.
  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
  I have never seen treatment like this of a worthy colleague. I have 
never seen treatment like this of somebody who has spent a lifetime 
living his beliefs and doing what is right.
  Of the 69 Attorneys General of the United States, John Ashcroft has 
more qualifications than all but a handful; some say more 
qualifications than any one who has been Attorneys General. I will not 
go that far. But there is only a handful that have at least some of the 
qualifications that John Ashcroft has.
  Think of what Senator Ashcroft's critics are doing to the State of 
Missouri in the arguments that have been made here. Why, you would all 
have to imply that the people of Missouri just have no brains to elect 
somebody as vicious, as violent, and as awful as John Ashcroft, when it 
is completely the other way. I commend the people of Missouri for 
having the brains to have somebody of that quality serve them as 
attorney general, Governor, and Senator.
  Look at the way he handled his defeat--with decency; much more than 
has been shown to him--consideration, and kindness. And we are happy to 
welcome our new colleague from Missouri because of John Ashcroft's 
gracious concession and because she is a great person to boot. But 
Senator Ashcroft could have contested the election. The loss of a 
Senate race has to be personal. There are other legal aspects as well, 
it could be argued. But he didn't. He did not do what others are doing 
to him.
  When I see these outside groups, I welcome them because it is the 
first time we have seen them in 8 years. Isn't that interesting? They 
seem to react and get into action only when there is a Republican 
President. I wonder why that is the case.
  I respect their right to advocate. I respect their point of view even 
though I don't agree with many of them. I respect their right to come 
in and state that point of view.
  But I resent the way they have done it. I resent the way they have 
picked on John Ashcroft. I resent the unfair tactics. I resent the 
distortions of his record. Boy, it has been distorted. I think we all 
resent it.
  Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
  Isn't it amazing that only during Republican Presidencies we have all 
these groups coming out of the woodwork? I guess they can say it is 
because Republicans don't agree with them.
  That is what makes this country great. We don't all have to agree.
  Let me put it bluntly. Is it getting to the point where only pro-
choice people can serve in as Attorney General of the United States? Do 
we have a litmus test that says that we have to reject highly qualified 
individuals who believe otherwise, but who will enforce the law as it 
exists? Is that where we are going in this country? Or are we going to 
continue to distort his record on guns? John Ashcroft has a sterling 
record on getting tough with criminals who use guns. That is the way to 
end the misuse of guns in this society--get tough on those who misuse 
them. There would be a lot less crime. But no, if we don't agree with 
certain anti-gun groups and we just ignore the history of the second 
amendment completely, we are not worthy of being Attorney General.
  To have his record distorted when he has been a forthright, strong 
proponent of tough anticrime laws against those who misuse guns, it is 
a disgrace.
  Desegregation: Sometimes in the law we can differ and have a good 
case and we might lose. But that doesn't mean the case wasn't good. If 
you look at the record of court-ordered desegregation in St. Louis and 
Kansas City, it didn't work. The people hurt the worst were the people 
in the inner cities of St. Louis and Kansas City. It cost $1.8 billion, 
which John thought was a raid on the State treasury. The State was 
never found liable for interdistrict segregation. Those are important 
points.
  I want Members to think about it. Why would anybody in this body say 
some of the things that have been said about John Ashcroft? Is it 
because they want to make John Ashcroft the new Newt Gingrich so they 
can raise funds for reelection? I certainly hope not. But there are 
some who believe that. I am not sure it is not true. Is it because they 
are sending a message that no conservative who believes in the right to 
life should ever be Attorney General? Or even more, should never be on 
the circuit courts or supreme court of this land? Is that what we are 
doing? I believe some are doing it for that reason. I know some of the 
outside groups are doing it for that reason. I know they are trying to 
get as many votes against John Ashcroft so they can claim a victory, 
even though John Ashcroft is going to be the next Attorney General of 
the United States. I guess they want to undermine him from day 1. They 
got the wrong guy.
  This is a fellow who will do what he thinks is right, and by and 
large will be right. Everybody in this body admits he would be a great 
law enforcement Attorney General.
  The fact is, they know he is tough on crime. After all, that is one 
of the things we are all worried about. People are scared to death in 
this land today because we have allowed drugs to pervade the land. We 
have allowed criminality to pervade the land. We haven't been as tough 
as we should be. We have illicit use of guns in this land because we 
are not enforcing the laws. Instead of going after those who misuse the 
guns, they have been complaining about guns themselves. I would rather 
attack the problem in a responsible and intelligent way. Let he who has 
not sinned cast the first stone. Do unto others as you would have them 
do unto you.
  I hope we don't have another nominee that goes through this, a person 
of decency and honor. I hope whether he or she is a Democrat or 
Republican, they will have a little more class than we have had 
displayed in this matter. I hope my colleagues on the other side will 
vote for John Ashcroft because it is the right thing to do. We should 
never get into these name-calling contests and distort people's 
records, especially someone of the quality of John Ashcroft, and a 
colleague at that.
  Mr. President, I rise today to speak in strong support of President 
Bush's nominee for Attorney General, our former colleague, John 
Ashcroft. Senator Ashcroft will be one of the most qualified Attorney 
Generals in our history. Unfortunately, he has also been the target of 
one of the most vicious and unrelenting smear campaigns in our history, 
and it is with that in mind that I feel compelled to set the record 
straight and describe at length, the real facts and the real 
qualifications of someone I think this country will be very fortunate 
to have serve as our Attorney General.
  Mr. President, much of the debate over the nomination of John 
Ashcroft has focused on issues tangential to the core mission of the 
Department of Justice. The Senate would be well-served

[[Page 1248]]

to consider the Ashcroft nomination in light of the duties of the 
Attorney General. When this debate is placed in the proper perspective, 
it becomes even more obvious how qualified Senator Ashcroft is to be 
the next Attorney General of the United States.
  The Department of Justice was established by Congress in 1870. It is 
the largest law firm in the United States, with 123,000 employees and 
an annual budget of approximately $21 billion. Through its thousands of 
lawyers, agents, and investigators, the Justice Department plays a 
vital role in fighting violent crime and drug trafficking, ensuring 
business competition in the marketplace, enforcing immigration and 
naturalization laws, and protecting our environment. Consider the 
following major components of the Justice Department in light of the 
qualifications of Senator Ashcroft:
  The Civil Rights Division was established in 1957 to secure the 
effective enforcement of civil rights for all Americans. Attorneys in 
the Civil Rights Division enforce federal statutes that prohibit 
discrimination on the basis of race, gender, disability, religion, and 
national origin. In order to enforce these landmark laws, the Civil 
Rights Division engages in a variety of litigation to fight 
discrimination in employment, housing and immigration. In particular, 
the litigation brought by the Civil Rights Division under the Voting 
Rights Act has had a profound influence on the electoral landscape in 
the last three decades. As Senator Ashcroft emphatically stated at his 
confirmation hearing: ``No part of the Department of Justice is more 
important than the Civil Rights Division.''
  Senator Ashcroft's record proves that he believes in the mission of 
the Civil Rights Division. He vigorously enforced civil rights laws as 
the Attorney General and Governor of Missouri. He signed Missouri's 
first hate crimes statute. Not content to wait for the legislature to 
act, John Ashcroft made Missouri one of the first States to recognize 
Martin Luther King Day by issuing an executive order. He also led the 
fight to save Lincoln University, the Missouri university founded by 
African-American Civil War veterans.
  Furthermore, as the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee in the 
Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Ashcroft held the first hearing on 
racial profiling in the history of Congress. When asked at his 
confirmation hearing about his priorities for the Justice Department, 
Senator Ashcroft cited the abolition of racial profiling as one of his 
top two priorities.
  I ask my colleagues to look to Senator Ashcroft's record and ignore 
the propaganda generated by extremist lobbying groups. Under attorney 
General Ashcroft, the Civil Rights Division will be in good hands.
  Senator Ashcroft stated at his confirmation hearing that the 
paramount civil right is personal safety. The Attorney General is 
America's chief law enforcement officer, and managing the Criminal 
Division is the most important aspect of the Attorney General's duties. 
The Criminal Division oversees thousands of federal agents and is 
charged with, among other things, investigating and prosecuting drug 
dealers, illegal gun traffickers, bank robbers, child pornographers, 
computer hackers, and terrorists. The Criminal Division has a visible 
and tangible effect on the lives of all Americans.
  I have no doubt that, given his extensive experience as a public 
servant, Senator Ashcroft understands and appreciates the mission of 
the Criminal Division. Throughout his long career as Missouri Attorney 
General, Missouri Governor, and United States Senator, Senator Ashcroft 
has been a strong advocate of tough and effective criminal law 
enforcement.
  Perhaps the greatest threat facing our nation today is the scourge of 
illegal drugs. For years, Senator Ashcroft has been a leader in the 
fight against illegal drugs. In 1996, Senator Ashcroft helped enact the 
Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act, which increased penalties 
for the manufacture and trafficking of methamphetamine. Senator 
Ashcroft also helped enact federal laws that increased mandatory 
minimum sentences for methamphetamine offenses and authorized courts to 
order persons convicted of methamphetamine offenses to pay for the 
costs of laboratory cleanup. Last year, Senator Ashcroft authored 
legislation to target additional resources to local law enforcement 
agencies to fight methamphetamine.
  Senator Ashcroft also understands that drug treatment and prevention 
are vital components of an effective drug strategy. In last year's 
methamphetamine legislation, Senator Ashcroft included funding for drug 
education and prevention programs, including resources for school-based 
anti-methamphetamine initiatives. As Attorney General and Governor of 
Missouri, Senator Ashcroft increased funding for anti-drug programs by 
almost 40%, the vast majority of which was for education, prevention 
and treatment.
  Senator Ashcroft has also made clear that prosecuting gun crimes will 
be a top priority of the Ashcroft Justice Department. Unfortunately, 
gun prosecutions have not always been a priority for the Department of 
Justice. For example, between 1992 and 1998, prosecutions of defendants 
who use a firearm in the commission of a felony dropped nearly 50 
percent, from 7,045 to approximately 3,800. In the Senate, John 
Ashcroft was one of the leaders in fighting gun crimes. To reverse the 
decline in gun prosecutions by the Justice Department, Senator Ashcroft 
sponsored legislation to authorize $50 million to hire additional 
federal prosecutors and agents to increase the federal prosecution of 
criminals who use guns.
  In addition, Senator Ashcroft authored legislation to prohibit 
juveniles from possessing assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition 
clips. The Senate overwhelmingly passed the Ashcroft juvenile assault 
weapons ban in May of 1999.
  Senator Ashcroft voted for legislation that prohibits any person 
convicted of even misdemeanor acts of domestic violence from possessing 
a firearm, and he voted for legislation to extend the Brady Act to 
prohibit persons who commit violent crimes as juveniles from possessing 
firearms. In order to close the so-called ``gun show loophole,'' 
Senator Ashcroft voted for legislation, which I authored, to require 
mandatory instant background checks for all firearm purchases at gun 
shows.
  In order to maintain tough federal penalties, Senator Ashcroft 
sponsored legislation to require a five-year mandatory minimum prison 
sentence for federal gun crimes and for legislation to encourage 
schools to expel students who bring guns to school. Senator Ashcroft 
voted for the ``Gun-Free Schools Zone Act'' that prohibits the 
possession of a firearm in a school zone, and he voted for legislation 
to require gun dealers to offer child safety locks and other gun safety 
devices for sale. I have no doubt that with John Ashcroft as Attorney 
General, the Justice Department will target and prosecute gun crimes 
with unprecedented zeal.
  To his credit, Senator Ashcroft understands that the vast majority of 
criminal law enforcement takes place at the state and local level. 
Given his tenure as Missouri Attorney General and Governor, Senator 
Ashcroft appreciates the important role that the federal government can 
play in supporting state and local authorities by providing resources 
and training. He also understands that the Justice Department should 
provide such support without intruding into traditional areas of state 
sovereignty.
  In the Senate, Senator Ashcroft steadfastly supported state and local 
law enforcement. He won enactment of a bill that extends higher 
education financial assistance to spouses and dependent children of law 
enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. He was the principal 
proponent of the ``Care for Police Survivors Act,'' a measure that 
increases benefits to the survivors of public safety officers killed in 
the line of duty. Along with Senator Biden, Senator Ashcroft co-
sponsored legislation to reauthorize the COPS program.
  In addition, Senator Ashcroft cosponsored the ``Local Law Enforcement 
Enhancement Act of 1995.'' This act allocated $1 billion to state and 
local law enforcement to update and computerize

[[Page 1249]]

criminal records, automated fingerprint systems, and DNA identification 
operations. John Ashcroft also cosponsored the ``21st Century Justice 
Act'' which included Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-
Sentencing Incentive Grants. These grants have provided federal 
resources to States to build prisons to incarcerate violent and repeat 
offenders. Given his record, it is no surprise that law enforcement 
groups such as the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriff's 
Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the 
National District Attorneys Association, and the National Association 
of Police Organizations are united in their support for Senator 
Ashcroft's nomination.
  The Civil Division represents the United States government, including 
executive departments and agencies, in civil litigation. First and 
foremost, the Civil Division defends the constitutionality of federal 
statutes, regulations, and executive orders. The Civil Division also 
litigates complex commercial cases. This litigation is especially 
important for property rights because the Civil Division represents the 
federal government against claims that private property was taken for 
public use without just compensation. In addition, the Civil Division 
represents the federal government in consumer litigation under various 
consumer protection and public health statutes.
  Senator Ashcroft's experience as the Attorney General of Missouri 
prepared him well to oversee the Civil Division. John Ashcroft 
established the Consumer Affairs Division in the Missouri Attorney 
General's office. He brought many consumer protection actions, 
including odometer tampering cases and financial pyramid schemes. In 
Illinois v. Abbott & Associates, Inc., Attorney General Ashcroft filed 
a brief in the United States Supreme Court supporting the right of 
state attorneys general to conduct antitrust investigations. In the 
Senate, John Ashcroft helped enact legislation to combat telemarketing 
scams against senior citizens.
  As Missouri Attorney General, Senator Ashcroft defended the 
constitutionality of state laws. In 1993, he personally argued a case 
before the United States Supreme Court in defense of the 
constitutionality of a Missouri statute. Few nominees for Attorney 
General have been so qualified to oversee the Civil Division.
  Created in 1909, the Environment and Natural Resources Division is 
the Nation's chief environmental lawyer. It is responsible for 
litigating cases ranging from the protection of endangered species to 
the clean-up of hazardous waste sites. In addition to prosecuting 
environmental crimes, the Environment and Natural Resources Division 
ensures that federal environmental laws are implemented in a fair and 
consistent manner.
  As Missouri Attorney General, John Ashcroft aggressively enforced 
that state's environmental protection laws. To cite but a few examples, 
Attorney General Ashcroft brought suit to prevent an electric company 
from causing oxygen levels in downstream waters to harm fish. He also 
sought to recover damages from the electric company.
  Attorney General Ashcroft brought a successful action against the 
owner of an apartment complex for violations of the Missouri Clean 
Water Law relating to treatment of waste water, and he sued the owner 
of a trailer park for violations of the Missouri Clean Water Law.
  As Missouri Attorney General, Senator Ashcroft also filed numerous 
briefs in the United States Supreme Court that advanced environmental 
protections. For example:
  In Pacific Gas & Electric Co. v. State Energy Resources Conservation 
& Development Commission, Attorney General Ashcroft filed a brief 
supporting a California law that conditioned the construction of 
nuclear power plants on findings that adequate storage and disposal 
facilities are available.
  In Sporhase v. Nebraska, Attorney General Ashcroft endorsed the State 
of Nebraska's effort to stop defendants from transporting Nebraska 
groundwater into Colorado without a permit.
  In Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 
Inc., Attorney General Ashcroft filed a brief supporting the Natural 
Resources Defense Council's position on tougher environmental 
regulations relating to storage of nuclear wastes.
  As Missouri Attorney General, John Ashcroft issued numerous legal 
opinions that furthered the enforcement of environmental laws. I would 
like to describe a few of these formal opinions. In Attorney General 
Opinion No. 123-84, Attorney General Ashcroft issued an opinion that 
underground injection wells constitute pollution of the waters of the 
state and are subject to regulation by the Missouri Department of 
Natural Resources under the state's Clean Water Act. Attorney General 
Ashcroft also opined that it would be unlawful to build or operate such 
a well unless a permit had been obtained from the Clean Water 
Commission.
  In Attorney General Opinion No. 67, Attorney General Ashcroft issued 
an opinion that operators of surface mines must obtain a permit for 
each year that the mine was un-reclaimed. In reaching this opinion, 
Attorney General Ashcroft determined that the operator of the mine must 
have a permit continuously from the time mining operations begin until 
reclamation of the site is complete. Attorney General Ashcroft 
concluded that the continuous permit requirement facilitated Missouri's 
intention ``to protect and promote the health, safety and general 
welfare of the people of this state, and to protect the natural 
resources of the state from environmental harm.''
  In Attorney General Opinion No. 189, Attorney General Ashcroft issued 
an opinion that Missouri's cities and counties had the authority to 
require that all solid waste be disposed of at approved solid waste 
recovery facilities, rather than be buried in landfills. In rendering 
his opinion, Attorney General Ashcroft gave credence to the arguments 
that ``recycling of solid wastes results in fewer health hazards and 
pollution problems than does disposal of the same types of wastes in 
landfills'' and that ``public welfare is better served by burning solid 
wastes for generation of electricity, thus conserving scarce natural 
resources.'' To those who have irresponsibly charged that Senator 
Ashcroft will not enforce our environmental laws, I say this: Look at 
his record.
  Mr. President, there are other offices in the Justice Department that 
are also very important. In the interest of time, however, I have 
focused on a select few. My point today is a simple one--when this 
nomination is considered in light of the mission of the Department of 
Justice, it becomes apparent how well-qualified John Ashcroft is to be 
Attorney General.
  In addition to placing in the record Senator Ashcroft's eminent 
qualifications, I would also like to correct the record surrounding a 
number of issues that have been raised by his critics. As Senator 
Sessions has said, Senator Ashcroft has been called ``divisive'', but 
that has been a result of a caricature created by extremist lobbying 
groups who have spared nothing to demonize him. Webster includes in its 
definition of ``caricature'', ``a likeness or imitation that is that is 
so distorted or inferior as to seem ludicrous.'' The portrait of John 
Ashcroft that has been painted by the People For the American Way and 
other like-motivated people and organizations is ludicrous. They 
describe a man that I do not recognize as John Ashcroft. Unlike their 
demonization, the real John Ashcroft has the character and the 
intelligence to be a great Attorney General.
  Before addressing some of the unfair attacks leveled against Senator 
Ashcroft, I should say a word or two on standards. We have heard much 
discussion about the appropriate standard of ``advise and consent'' 
that we should apply to the President's Cabinet nominees. 
Unfortunately, many people, knowing that opposing Senator Ashcroft on 
ideological grounds would be unprecedented, appear to be manipulating 
this standard so as to mask their true reasons for opposing this 
nomination. And those reasons, I must say, are purely ideological. 
Prodded, and perhaps in some cases even threatened, by assorted left-
wing extremist groups, those on the other side appear to oppose Senator 
Ashcroft simply because he is a conservative.

[[Page 1250]]

  The standard we should use is that which was applied to Attorney 
General Janet Reno in 1993, and that standard has three parts. First, 
by longstanding tradition in the Senate, we must afford the President a 
significant degree of deference to shape his Cabinet as he sees fit. 
The election is over, President Bush won, and nothing will change that 
fact. Some have suggested that because the election was close and 
divisive, we should be less deferential with respect to Cabinet 
nominees. Yet, I do not recall hearing that suggestion in 1993 after 
President Clinton won an extremely close and hard-fought election, an 
election in which he failed to garner a majority of the popular vote. 
Despite that close election, every Republican in this body deferred to 
President Clinton and voted for Attorney General Reno.
  The second prong of our standard focuses on the experience and 
qualifications of the nominee. No one can seriously contend that 
Senator Ashcroft lacks the experience and qualifications to serve as 
Attorney General. Indeed, few in our nation's history have come to the 
post of Attorney General with the qualifications and experience that 
Senator Ashcroft brings. In almost thirty years of public service, he 
has served as a state attorney general, state governor, and United 
States Senator. While Missouri Attorney General, he was elected by the 
other state attorneys general to head the National Association of 
Attorneys General, while Governor of Missouri, his fellow governors 
elected him chairman of the National Governors' Association, and while 
a United States Senator, he served four years on the Judiciary 
Committee. By comparison, Attorney General Reno came to the post as a 
county prosecutor. Yet, despite concerns about her qualifications, 
every Republican in this body voted to confirm her.
  The final prong of our standard requires us to ensure that the 
nominee possesses the necessary integrity and ethics to serve the 
American people. Here, Senator Ashcroft is above reproach. He is, by 
all accounts, a man of absolute honesty and deep religious conviction. 
I know I speak for many of my colleagues when I say that I knew 
President Bush had found the right person to enforce the laws of this 
nation when Senator Ashcroft raised his right hand and said, ``As a man 
of faith, I take my word and my integrity seriously. . . . when I swear 
to uphold the law, I will keep my oath, so help me God.''
  Mr. President, as the senior senator from Vermont succinctly stated, 
albeit when the president was a member of his own party, ``The 
president should get to pick his own team. Unless the nominee is 
incompetent or some other major ethical or investigative problem arises 
. . . then the president gets the benefit of the doubt. There is no 
doubt about this nominee's qualifications or integrity.'' That is the 
standard that this Senate has always applied to Cabinet nominees. As 
others have noted, over the entire history of the Senate, this body has 
voted to reject only 9 nominations to the President's Cabinet, and only 
3 in the 20th Century. In 1993, Republicans applied that traditional 
standard when we unanimously voted to confirm an attorney general 
nominee whose views on the death penalty, the Second Amendment, and 
abortion stood in stark contrast to our own. Unless those on the other 
side wish to engage in rank hypocrisy, this is the standard we should 
apply to Senator Ashcroft today.
  Opponents of Senator Ashcroft have accused him of being unable to set 
aside his opinions on certain laws sufficiently in order to enforce 
those laws. What's being proposed is to disqualify from high office 
anyone who has previously taken a side on a legislative proposal.
  It is simply not true that a legislator is so tainted by efforts to 
change laws that thereafter he or she cannot perform the duties of 
attorney general. Outside this Chamber, and outside of the offices of 
the left-wing liberal group's offices, Americans understand that people 
can take on different roles and responsibilities when they are given 
different positions. Americans know that lawyers can become judges, 
welders can become foremen, engineers can become managers, and school 
teachers can become school board leaders. And Americans know that a 
Senator, whose job is to propose and vote on new laws, can become an 
Attorney General, whose job is to enforce those laws that are duly 
passed.
  There aren't many people who know as much about the different roles 
in government as John Ashcroft. He has been in the executive branch as 
Missouri Attorney General for 8 years. He has been chief executive as 
Missouri's Governor for 8 years. And he has been in the legislative 
branch as a United States Senator for 6 years. Each of these positions 
have required an understanding of the differing roles assumed by the 
three branches of government.
  It is in this context that John Ashcroft told us what he will do as 
Attorney General. He said he will enforce the laws as written, and 
uphold the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court. This is a 
concise yet profound statement about the proper role of the Attorney 
General. And it is more than just a statement, because it is backed up 
by the unquestioned integrity of John Ashcroft, a man who will do what 
he says. He will enforce the law as it is written, even in those 
instances where he would have written it differently.
  Still, some members of this body are unconvinced. They apparently 
think that John Ashcroft will not do what he said. Of course they would 
not call him a liar at least not explicitly, anyway. They are saying 
that, try as he might, he simply cannot enforce the law because he 
wants so badly for the law to say something other than what it actually 
says.
  Some who have adopted this view are accusing John Ashcroft of 
changing his views. They accuse him of having a ``confirmation 
conversion.'' By this they mean that people who take off their 
legislator's cap, and put on an attorney general's hat, cannot adapt 
from the role of law writer to law enforcer without being insincere. 
This is a ludicrous proposition. John Ashcroft has not undergone a 
confirmation conversion; he has been the victim of an interest group 
distortion.
  Members of this body know something that the public may not: There is 
an unspoken rule that a nominee does not answer questions in public 
between their nomination and their confirmation hearing. This is done 
out of respect for the Senate--whose job it is, after all, to listen to 
the nominee rather than the media. But savvy special interest groups 
take advantage of this interim time to wage a war of words against 
nominees they dislike. Many of those words are exaggerated or 
unsubstantiated attacks. The result can be the fabrication of a false 
public record.
  Mr. President, I am asking my fellow Senators to resist the 
temptation to label it a ``conversion'' when a nominee simply corrects 
the misperceptions created by special interest groups. I am asking my 
colleagues to look at John Ashcroft's real record, and at his own words 
in his confirmation hearings, and in his answers to the voluminous 
written questions--rather than relying on the press releases of issue 
advocates.
  John Ashcroft is committed to enforcing the civil rights of all 
Americans. He has stated that the Civil Rights Division is the most 
important division of the Justice Department and that he will make 
enforcement of civil rights a priority during his tenure as Attorney 
General. Contrary to the attacks of his critics, Senator Ashcroft has 
demonstrated his commitment to equality under the law throughout his 
career. For example, as Governor, he signed Missouri's first hate 
crimes statute into law. He signed Missouri's Martin Luther King 
Holiday into law and also signed the law establishing Scott Joplin's 
house as Missouri's first and only historic site honoring an African-
American. John Ashcroft led the fight to save an independent Lincoln 
University, founded by African-American soldiers. He also established 
an award emphasizing academic excellence in the name of George 
Washington Carver, a wonderful intellectual role model for all Missouri 
students. As Governor, John Ashcroft was presented

[[Page 1251]]

with 9 panels for judicial appointment that contained minority 
candidates. In 8 of the 9 instances, Ashcroft appointed a minority 
candidate to fill the post, and he appointed both of the minority 
candidates on the 9th panel to judicial positions at a later date. He 
appointed many African-Americans to Missouri's courts, including David 
Mason, Jimmy Edwards, Charles Shaw and Michael Calvin, in St. Louis. He 
also appointed the first African-American judge on the Western Missouri 
Court of Appeals in Kansas City, Missouri's second highest court. This 
jurist, Ferdinand Gaitan, now serves on the U.S. District Court for 
Western Missouri.
  He continued this leadership in the Senate where he convened the only 
Senate hearing on Racial Profiling (March 30, 2000) with Senator 
Feingold. During that hearing, Senator Ashcroft spoke out strongly on 
the issue stating that ``[U]sing race broadly as profiler in lieu of 
individualized suspicion is, I believe, an unconstitutional practice.'' 
He has supported efforts to study the issue and during his hearing 
testified that as Attorney General, he would continue the studies 
already underway to examine racial and geographical disparities in 
death penalty cases. In short, John Ashcroft's record demonstrates his 
ability to lead a Justice Department of which we can all be proud.
  John Ashcroft will be committed to enforcing the civil rights laws 
protecting every American's right to vote and participate in the 
political process. He has done so throughout his career. Some who 
oppose Senator Ashcroft have charged that as Governor, John Ashcroft 
essentially blocked two bills that would have required the City of St. 
Louis Board of Election Commissioners to deputize private voter 
registration volunteers. These bills were opposed by both democrats and 
republicans in St. Louis. It was opposed by the bipartisan St. Louis 
County Board of Election Commissioners, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen 
President Tom Villa, and St. Louis circuit attorney George Peach. Tom 
Villa was a noted Democratic leader, and St. Louis circuit attorney 
George Peach was a Democrat who was the prosecutor in the St. Louis 
area. All of these people opposed the legislation. The recommendations 
of these officials was one of the reasons that John Ashcroft vetoed the 
bills.
  It was insinuated during the hearings that these actions were taken 
out of some kind of partisan or racial motivation, because the City of 
St. Louis is predominantly black and democratic. But this implication 
is seriously discredited by the history of voter registration in St. 
Louis and earlier federal court cases.
  The city board has a long history of refusing to deputize private 
voter registration deputies, long before John Ashcroft appointed anyone 
to that board. Indeed, in 1981 a lawsuit was filed against the members 
of the St. Louis board concerning the failure to deputize voter 
registration deputies. The Federal District Court for the Eastern 
District of Missouri explicitly rejected charges of racial animus. The 
court found that the board properly refused to deputize volunteers to 
prevent fraud and ensure impartiality and administrative efficiency. 
Moreover, these conclusions were sustained by the 8th Circuit, in an 
opinion by Judge McMillan, a prominent African-American jurist.
  Some have also claimed that then-Governor Ashcroft refused to appoint 
a diverse group of commissioners to the Election Board. This is simply 
untrue. Mr. Jerry Hunter, the former labor secretary of Missouri, 
testified that Senator Ashcroft worked hard to increase black 
representation on the St. Louis City Election Board, but his efforts 
were stalled by state senators.
  Mr. Hunter testified that, ``Governor Ashcroft's first black nominee 
for the St. Louis City Election Board was rejected by the black state 
senator, because that person did not come out of his organization.'' 
When then-Governor Ashcroft came up with a second black attorney, this 
candidate was also rejected by two black state senators. As Mr. Hunter 
stated, ``[F]rom the beginning, any efforts to make changes in the St. 
Louis City Election Board were forestalled because the state senators 
wanted people from their own organization.'' Apparently for these state 
senators the political spoils system was more important than the voters 
of St. Louis.
  Finally, some have implied that these voter registration issues will 
make Senator Ashcroft less able to deal with allegations of voting 
improprieties resulting from the Florida vote in the presidential 
election. Yet Senator Ashcroft has repeatedly testified, ``I will 
investigate any alleged voting rights violation that has credible 
evidence. . . . I have no reason not to go forward, and would not 
refuse go forward for any reason other than a conclusion that there 
wasn't credible evidence to pursue the case.'' Objective people should 
have no doubt that Senator Ashcroft will be vigorous in his enforcement 
of the Voting Rights Act and related statutes.
  Critics of Senator Ashcroft have also unfairly criticized his 
testimony about his involvement with the desegregation cases in St. 
Louis and Kansas City. Senator Ashcroft gave complete and responsive 
answers to questions about these cases. Any assertions to the contrary 
distort Senator Ashcroft's responses to a flurry of questions about 
difficult and complicated cases in which he was involved over a decade 
ago.
  The Missouri school desegregation cases are extremely complex and 
involve a variety of different factual and constitutional issues. 
Perhaps Senator Ashcroft made some preliminary statements that were 
incomplete, or not fully clear, but when questioned further, he 
clarified his answers in an accurate and fair manner. Moreover, in an 
extended response to a written question, he fully detailed Missouri's 
liability and involvement with the case. Far from being misleading, 
Senator Ashcroft's answers get to the heart of the distinctions in the 
case between inter- and intra-district liability for segregation.
  Some complain that Senator Ashcroft denied that the state was a party 
to the lawsuit, however, the initial suit was filed in 1972 and did not 
make the State a party. Eventually the State was made party to the 
lawsuit in 1977 and Senator Ashcroft acknowledged this repeatedly in 
his answers.
  Second, Senator Ashcroft's critics argue that Senator Ashcroft denied 
the State's liability. The State was found liable for school 
segregation in St. Louis, but only for intra-district segregation 
within the City of St. Louis. The remedy that the district court 
ordered was inter-district, between St. Louis and its suburbs. The 
State was never found liable for the inter-district segregation that 
would justify such a far-ranging remedy involving the suburbs. Then-
Attorney General Ashcroft was battling against this inter-district 
remedy, and it is fully accurate to say that the State was never found 
liable for inter-district segregation.
  Third, opponents of Senator Ashcroft unfairly charge that Senator 
Ashcroft misleadingly stated that he followed all court orders in the 
desegregation cases. Of course, these opponents cannot say that John 
Ashcroft did not follow the orders, and must admit that John Ashcroft 
complied with the terms of the orders. They can only criticize ``his 
vigorous and repeated appeals.'' These appeals were undertaken in his 
role as attorney general--as the legal representative of the State John 
Ashcroft had to consider the State's best interests and raise all 
reasonable legal appeals, which he did. To make a legal appeal is not 
to disobey a court order. In fact many court orders were complied with 
while the appeals were pending.
  Fourth, the criticisms of Senator Ashcroft's actions strongly and 
unfairly imply that he was indifferent to the problems of segregation. 
Nothing could be further from the truth. Senator Ashcroft testified 
that ``I have always opposed segregation. I have never opposed 
integration. I believe that segregation is inconsistent with the 14th 
Amendment's guaranteeing of equal protection. I supported integrating 
the schools.'' What Senator Ashcroft opposed was court-ordered remedies 
that we now know to have been wildly expensive and ineffective. Test 
results

[[Page 1252]]

have declined, graduation rates have remained at a dismal 30 percent, 
and the percentage of black students has remained about the same in St. 
Louis schools. All of this for the price-tag of $1.7 billion. It is 
hard to see how a person who opposed this plan can be considered 
against educational equality. The result of court-ordered desegregation 
in St. Louis is just one example of why, as Bob Woodson testified, a 
significant majority of African-Americans are against forced busing for 
integration.
  John Ashcroft will stand behind the commitments he made during his 
confirmation and be a staunch defender of the civil rights of all 
Americans. Senator Ashcroft has demonstrated his commitment to equality 
through his record as Attorney General, Governor and Senator. Contrary 
to his critics who have distorted his record on hiring, John Ashcroft 
has been deeply committed to promoting equal access to government 
positions during his tenure as both Attorney General and Governor of 
Missouri. Witnesses testifying at the hearing made this commitment 
clear.
  Mr. Jerry Hunter, former labor secretary of Missouri, testified that, 
``Like President-elect George W. Bush, Senator Ashcroft followed a 
policy of affirmative access and inclusiveness during his service to 
the state of Missouri as attorney general, his two terms as governor, 
and his one term in the United States Senate. During the eight years 
that Senator Ashcroft was attorney general for the state of Missouri, 
he recruited and hired minority lawyers. During his tenure as governor, 
he appointed blacks to numerous boards and commissions . . . [B]ut I 
would say to you on a personal note, Senator Ashcroft went out of his 
way to find African-Americans to consider for appointments.''
  Mr. Hunter further elaborated that, ``When Governor Ashcroft's term 
ended in January of 1993, he had appointed more African-Americans to 
state court judgeships than any previous governor in the history of the 
state of Missouri. Governor Ashcroft was also bipartisan in his 
appointment of state court judges. He appointed Republicans, Democrats 
and independents. One of Governor Ashcroft's black appointees in St. 
Louis was appointed, notwithstanding the fact that he was not a 
Republican and that he was on a panel with a well-known white 
Republican. Of the nine panels of nominees for state court judgeships, 
which included at least one African-American, Governor Ashcroft 
appointed eight black judges from those panels.''
  Judge David Mason, who worked with Ashcroft in the Missouri Attorney 
General's office stated, ``[A]s time went on, I begin to get a real 
feel for this man and where his heart is. When the subject of Martin 
Luther King Day came up, I was there. And I recall that he issued the 
executive order to establish the first King Day, rather than wait for 
the legislature to do it. Because, as you may recall, some of you, when 
the Congress passed the holiday, they passed it at a time when the 
Missouri legislature may not have been able to have the first holiday 
contemporaneously with it. So he passed a King holiday by executive 
order. He said, in doing so, he wanted his children to grow up in a 
state that observed someone like Martin Luther King.''
  Bob Woodson of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise uses 
faith-based organizations to help troubled young people turn their 
lives around. Mr. Woodson testified: ``Senator John Ashcroft is the 
only person who, from the time he came into this body, reached out to 
us. He's on the board of Teen Challenge. He's raised money for them. He 
sponsored a charitable choice legislation that will stop the government 
from trying to close them down because they don't have trained 
professionals as drug counselors. We have an 80 percent success rate of 
these faith-based organizations with a $60-a-day cost, when the 
conventional, therapeutically secular program cost $600 a day with a 6 
to 10 percent success rate. Senator Ashcroft has gone with us. He has 
fought with us. And this legislation would help us.'' Mr. Woodsen 
further stated that ``As a consequence, day before yesterday, 150 black 
and Hispanic transformed drug addicts got on buses from all over this 
nation and came here to support him. Fifty of them came from Victory 
Temple throughout the state of Texas, spent two days on a Greyhound bus 
at their own expense to come here to voice strong support for Senator 
Ashcroft.''
  Congressman J.C. Watts also testified: ``I've worked with [John 
Ashcroft] on legislation concerning poor communities, under-served 
communities. I have always found John Ashcroft to have nothing but the 
utmost respect and dignity for one's skin color. I heard John say 
yesterday in some of his testimony that his faith requires him to 
respect one's skin color. And I think that's the way it should be. [I]n 
my dealings with John, I have had nothing but the utmost respect for 
him when it comes to his dealings with people of different skin 
color.''
  These testimonials and Senator Ashcroft's record of hiring and 
appointments as Missouri Attorney General and Governor demonstrate 
beyond any reasonable doubt that he will be committed to equal 
opportunity as Attorney General of the United States.
  Many have expressed concerns about Senator Ashcroft's actions with 
regard to conducting a telephone interview with a magazine called 
Southern Partisan. Their concern is what message that interview might 
have sent to the country. It is clear, however, that Senator Ashcroft 
has forthrightly and forcefully condemned racism and discrimination, 
and he has left no doubt or ambiguity regarding his views on that 
matter.
  During his confirmation hearings, Senator Ashcroft said, ``Let me 
make something as plain as I can make it. Discrimination is wrong. 
Slavery was abhorrent. Fundamental to my belief in freedom and liberty 
is that these are God-given rights.'' And in his responses to written 
questions, he said, ``I reject racism in all its forms. I find racial 
discrimination abhorrent, and against everything that I believe in.'' 
It is clear to me that John Ashcroft believes in equal treatment under 
the law for everyone. He believes in it, and he has committed to fight 
to make it a reality for all Americans.
  Now, as to the magazine itself, Senator Ashcroft contritely admitted 
that he does not know very much about it. He confessed that he should 
have done more research about it before talking to them. And he said 
that he did not intend his telephone interview--or any other interview 
he has participated in during his career--as an automatic endorsement 
of the editorial positions of those publications. John Ashcroft went 
even further than that. He said, ``I condemn those things which are 
condemnable'' about Southern Partisan magazine. This was a strong 
statement against any unacceptable ideas discussed in that publication. 
And it was the strongest statement possible from someone who did not 
personally know the facts.
  Despite Senator Ashcroft's contriteness and strong words, some 
Senators and interest groups have demanded that Senator Ashcroft go out 
on a limb and add his derision based upon an acceptance at face value 
of all the negative allegations concerning that magazine. In my 
opinion, Mr. President, this led to one of the most profound moments of 
the confirmation hearings. A member of the Committee pushed Senator 
Ashcroft to label the Southern Partisan Magazine as ``racist''--even 
after Senator Ashcroft explained that he did not know whether that was 
true. The profound part was John Ashcroft's response. He said, ``I know 
they've been accused of being racist. I have to say this, Senator: I 
would rather be falsely accused of being a racist than to falsely 
accuse someone else of being a racist.'' This exchange tells volumes 
about John's moral character, deep sense of fairness, and his fitness 
for the office of Attorney General. It would have been a lot easier for 
him just to say Yes, I agree with anyone who uses that term about 
someone else. Doing so would have saved him from further bashing by the 
Committee and the press. It would have been politically expedient. But 
John Ashcroft chose to take the high road, not to heap disdain onto 
something he didn't know about just

[[Page 1253]]

because it would have suited his interests to do so. This was a vivid 
example of good judgment and good character.
  This is not to say that John Ashcroft defended anything about the 
magazine. Clearly he did not. In fact, when Senator Biden asked him 
whether the magazine was condemnable because it sells T-shirts that 
imply that Lincoln's assassin did a good thing, he answered: ``If they 
do that, I condemn'' it. And he clarified that ``Abraham Lincoln is my 
favorite political figure in the history of this country.'' What John 
Ashcroft did was state his absolute intolerance for racism and bigotry, 
and he did so honestly without creating a straw man, a scapegoat or a 
fall guy.
  I think we need to ask anyone who is not satisfied with John 
Ashcroft's answers what they really want. What do his accusers think 
justice is? I surely hope that no one in this body would say that 
justice means the knee-jerk condemnation of things they do not know 
about, so long as that condemnation is politically expedient.
  John Ashcroft's testimony on this issue demonstrates that he will be 
a fair and principled Attorney General. As he told the Judiciary 
Committee, ``I believe racism is wrong. I repudiate it. I repudiate 
racist organizations. I'm not a member of any of them. I don't 
subscribe to them. And I reject them.'' These are straightforward words 
from an honest man. I look forward to having such a man running our 
Department of Justice.
  The anti-Ashcroft groups also took advantage of a controversy 
concerning Bob Jones University in order to wage a ``guilt by 
association'' attack on John Ashcroft. John Ashcroft's visit to the 
school was not controversial when it occurred in May 1999. In fact, 
politicians of both parties had spoken there prior to Senator Ashcroft. 
Early in 2000, however, approximately eight months after John 
Ashcroft's visit, Bob Jones University became a flash point during the 
primary election because opponents of then-Governor George W. Bush 
accused Bush of associating with an anti-Catholic statement that 
appeared on the University's Internet site.
  Following the flap over Bush's visit, John Ashcroft said, ``I didn't 
really know they had these positions,'' and ``[f]rankly, I reject the 
anti-Catholic position of Bob Jones University categorically.'' Despite 
having repudiated the offending statement, John Ashcroft faced a new 
round of criticism for his appearance after he was nominated to be 
Attorney General. The special interest groups aligned against him 
attempted to associate John Ashcroft with every form of bigotry and 
intolerance they could.
  Any controversy over John Ashcroft's speech at Bob Jones University 
should have been put to rest by John Ashcroft's testimony at his 
confirmation hearings. That's when we finally got the chance to ask 
Senator Ashcroft what he thought. And Senator Ashcroft made it clear 
that he ``reject[s] any racial intolerance or religious intolerance 
that has been associated with[,] or is associated with[,]'' Bob Jones 
University. He couldn't have been more firm.
  Senator Ashcroft went on to explain that ``[he] want[s] to make it 
very clear that [he] reject[s] racial and religious intolerance.'' He 
said he does not endorse any bigoted views by virtue of ``having made 
an appearance in any faith or any congregation.'' He said, for example, 
that he has visited churches which do not ``allow women in certain 
roles,'' and that he does not endorse that view, either.
  Apparently, Ashcroft's answer eliminated any doubt about his personal 
views. As Senator Leahy told Senator Ashcroft during the hearing, ``I 
made my position very clear yesterday on how I feel about you on any 
questions of racial or religious bias. I stated that neither I nor 
anybody on this committee would make that claim about you.'' Even 
Catholic groups were satisfied. A spokesperson for the Catholic League 
said, ``In short, the controversy over Ashcroft is much ado about 
nothing as far as the Catholic League is concerned.''
  Some outside groups had questioned the meaning of the speech that 
Senator Ashcroft gave during his visit to Bob Jones University. Senator 
Ashcroft explained during the confirmation hearing that the phrase ``We 
have no king but Jesus,'' was a representation of what colonists were 
saying at the time of the American Revolution. He said that the point 
of his speech was ``the idea that the ultimate authority of the 
ultimate idea of freedom in America is not governmentally derived.'' I 
don't think anyone in the Senate would take issue with that. It is an 
understatement to say that this idea is well-documented in the 
Founders' writings.
  Lacking any basis to criticize John Ashcroft's May 1999 appearance, 
members of the Judiciary Committee went in search of controversy by 
asking Senator Ashcroft if he would go to Bob Jones University again if 
invited as Attorney General. He said he would ``speak at places where 
[he] believe[s] [he] can unite people and move them in the right 
direction.'' In saying that, he contritely explained that his 
confirmation hearings--``and the prelude to th[o]se hearings''--taught 
him to be ``sensitive at a higher level now than [he] was before, that 
the attorney general in particular needs to be careful about what he or 
she does.'' Senator Ashcroft said that, if confirmed, he ``would be 
sensitive to accepting invitations so as to not allow a presumption to 
be made that I was endorsing things that would divide people instead of 
unite them.'' This answer apparently did not satisfy some on the 
Committee who have since argued that he should have pledged never to 
return to the University.
  But as Senator Ashcroft explained at his hearing, it is shortsighted 
to make a pledge not to go somewhere just because you disagree with 
them. John Ashcroft pointed out that Bob Jones University has 
``abandoned the policy on interracial dating which was offensive'' 
after that policy became a focus of attention last year. I think John 
Ashcroft was contrite about what he learned and correct not to rule out 
visiting places where he thinks his presence could be a force for 
positive change.
  There has been much talk during the nominations process and in the 
press about the ``Ashcroft Standard.'' This is a catch-phrase invented 
by opponents of Senator Ashcroft who wish to create the impression that 
there is something unseemly about a senator vigorously exercising his 
constitutional duty to advise and give consent to executive branch 
nominees. But the Ashcroft Standard is strawman--created only so that 
it might be criticized.
  It is telling that this so-called Ashcroft Standard has been left 
undefined by those who invoke it. Its very hollowness is meant to evoke 
something inappropriate and suspect a way of evaluating far outside of 
the mainstream. Apparently this Standard is to be feared, because my 
colleagues repeatedly stated during the hearings that they would be 
magnanimous in not applying the Ashcroft Standard to John Ashcroft 
himself. But I suspect that John Ashcroft would pass the Ashcroft 
standard with flying colors.
  In fact the criteria that Senator Ashcroft used to evaluate executive 
branch nominees are entirely appropriate and in keeping with the 
Senate's duty to give ``advice and consent'' to the President.
  For instance, John Ashcroft applied his ``Standard'' to confirm all 
but 15 of President Clinton's 1,636 nominees. He voted to approve every 
Cabinet nomination made by President Clinton. Of President Clinton's 
230 judicial nominees, Senator Ashcroft voted to confirm 218. There is 
also an underlying insinuation that the Ashcroft Standard is tinged 
with racial bias--and yet Senator Ashcroft voted to confirm 26 of 28 
African-American judicial nominees.
  With so many of President Clinton's nominees getting past the 
Ashcroft Standard, some might argue that it's far too lenient, but that 
is the nature of the Senate's role. The President is thought to have 
significant leeway in choosing executive branch officials. The Senate 
gives advice and consent, but with great deference to the president's 
choice. As Hamilton wrote in the Federalist number 76,

       To what purpose then require the co-operation of the 
     Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence 
     would have a

[[Page 1254]]

     powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be 
     an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the 
     President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment 
     of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family 
     connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to 
     popularity.

  The advice and consent role of the Senate must be exercised with an 
eye to the moral character of the nominee and his suitability for the 
office to which he is nominated. But it is a role that must be 
exercised with some natural deference to the prerogatives of the 
President. Indeed, this is a deference that has not been shown to 
President Bush during Senator Ashcroft's four days of hearings followed 
by more than 350 written questions.
  The crux of the Senate's confirmation role is to not to quibble with 
the policy preferences of the President's nominees, but rather to 
evaluate the character and moral fitness of the nominee. Indeed, I ask 
myself when presented with a nominee whether this person will 
faithfully execute the office to which they have been appointed, 
upholding the laws of the United States in the given position. I 
believe that Senator Ashcroft has applied similar criterion when 
evaluating nominees. This is not a sinister standard, but rather a 
mostly ordinary one.
  When this question is asked about Senator Ashcroft the answer is 
incredibly clear. As attorney general of Missouri John Ashcroft showed 
time and again that he was willing to uphold law with which he 
disagreed. John Ashcroft testified, ``I understand that being attorney 
general means enforcing the laws as they are written, not enforcing my 
own personal preference; it means advancing the national interest, not 
advocating my personal interest.''
  For instance, in 1979 John Ashcroft issued an attorney general's 
opinion stating that under the state constitution and the law of 
Missouri, a local school board of education had no legal authority to 
grant permission for the distribution of religious publications to the 
student body on school grounds. In another situation, against the 
demands of pro-life advocates, then-attorney general Ashcroft directed 
the State of Missouri to maintain the confidentiality of abortion 
records because a fair reading of the law required it.
  Senator Ashcroft has not only testified that he will follow laws with 
which he disagrees, he has repeatedly shown that he does follow such 
laws. He has exhibited probity in office as attorney general, governor 
and senator. It is hard to imagine that he will not execute the office 
of United States Attorney General with equal integrity and commitment. 
Indeed, I am certain that Senator Ashcroft passes the much maligned 
Ashcroft Standard.
  So what is the Ashcroft Standard anyway? I admit that I am not quite 
sure. Is it a careful review of the nominee's written record? A 
judgment about how the nominee will enforce the law? A healthy dose of 
deference to the executive prerogative? An appreciation for diversity? 
These are the standards that I saw applied by Senator Ashcroft.
  The opponents of Senator Ashcroft have placed considerable emphasis 
on several specific nominations which I will discuss in turn.
  John Ashcroft's opponents have mischaracterized his actions with 
respect to the James Hormel nomination, and have fabricated innuendo 
aimed at tarnishing John Ashcroft's 30-year record of fairness with 
respect to employment of people without regard to sexual orientation.
  I supported James Hormel's nomination as Ambassador to Luxembourg. I 
thought he was qualified for that post. At the same time, however, I 
respected the fact that others in this body, including Senator 
Ashcroft, did not share my opinion. I cannot conclude--as some people 
have--that because Senator Ashcroft and I disagreed, that Senator 
Ashcroft's views, which were based on the totality of the record, were 
not valid. I have been in public service long enough to understand that 
thoughtful people can have honest differences of opinion on such 
matters without holding unsupportable or fundamentally biased points of 
view.
  Now, there has been a great deal of confusion about Senator 
Ashcroft's role in the Hormel nomination. Outside special interest 
groups--which are trying to derail Senator Ashcroft's nomination have 
accused him of singlehandedly blocking or stopping James Hormel's 
nomination simply because of Hormel's sexual orientation. These charges 
are simply false. Although, as John Ashcroft told the Judiciary 
Committee, he voted against the nomination when it came to a vote in 
the Foreign Relations Committee, he did nothing to stop that 
nomination. John Ashcroft did not block a Senate vote on Mr. Hormel's 
nomination. In fact, Senator Ashcroft did not do anything to keep James 
Hormel's nomination from progressing. It was Senator Hutchinson who put 
a hold on the vote. In a letter dated January 24, 2001, Senator 
Hutchinson told Ashcroft that ``I feel it is important to set the 
record straight that you were in no way involved in the effort to delay 
Mr. Hormel's consideration by the full Senate.''
  So let's look beyond the smokescreen of unsupported innuendo to 
examine what we really know about John Ashcroft. During the 
confirmation hearings, Senator Leahy asked John Ashcroft directly about 
his motives with respect to the James Hormel nomination. Senator Leahy 
asked, ``Did you block his nomination from coming to a vote because he 
is gay?'' And Senator Ashcroft said, ``I did not.'' He could not have 
been more clear. And when a man of John Ashcroft's integrity makes such 
a clear statement, we can take him at his word.
  Of course, opponents of John Ashcroft do not want to take him as his 
word. Some outside special interest groups are trying to use his Hormel 
nomination vote to paint a false portrait of a man who acts in a biased 
way against homosexuals. But there is absolutely no evidence in the 
record to support that accusation. Senator Ashcroft made it very clear, 
both during his hearing and in his responses to numerous written 
questions, that ``sexual orientation has never been something that I've 
used in hiring in any of the jobs, in any of the offices I've held.''
  In an effort to cloud this crystal-clear statement, the forces 
opposing Ashcroft presented to the media--not to the Judiciary 
Committee--a man named Paul Offner, who claimed that John Ashcroft 
asked him about sexual orientation 16 years ago in an interview. Mr. 
Offner's accusations have been entirely rebutted by two eyewitnesses 
present during that interview, both of whom have said that John 
Ashcroft never asked Mr. Offner--or any of the many other people he 
interviewed for jobs--about sexual preference. Carl Koupal, who sat in 
on numerous interviews with John Ashcroft as head of Ashcroft's 
gubernatorial transition team, said, ``I can say John Ashcroft did not 
ask that question of him or any other candidate we spoke to.'' Another 
Ashcroft aide, Duncan Kincheloe, said, ``It's inconceivable to me, and 
I'm certain I would remember if it had been asked. I've never heard him 
ask about that, and I've sat through dozens and dozens of interviews 
with him.'' This evidence should lay to rest any questions about John 
Ashcroft's past record of fairness with respect to sexual orientation.
  In addition to that past record, we also have Senator Ashcroft's 
clear pledge for the future. He told the Judiciary Committee in no 
uncertain terms that he ``will enforce the law equally without regard 
to sexual orientation if appointed and confirmed as attorney general.'' 
He also promised that sexual preference ``will not be a consideration 
in hiring at the Department of Justice'' if he is confirmed. And this 
statement reflects more than his promise to uphold current policy; it 
reflects John Ashcroft's own judgment. He said, ``Even if the executive 
order [barring the consideration of sexual orientation as relevant to 
hiring] would be repealed, I would still not consider sexual 
orientation in hiring at the Department of Justice because I don't 
believe it relevant to the responsibilities.'' Now, that is a very 
strong statement, Mr. President. Especially because it comes from a 
person of unquestioned integrity.
  The facts described above convince me completely that John Ashcroft 
will

[[Page 1255]]

always act fairly in his law enforcement decisions and hiring decisions 
to people regardless of sexual orientation.
  While reasonable minds can differ and come to different judgments on 
the matter, there were many legitimate reasons to vote against 
confirmation for Judge White. In fact, every Republican thought it was 
appropriate to do so. Several of my colleagues have argued that Senator 
Ashcroft distorted Judge White's record and wrongly painted him as pro-
criminal and anti-law enforcement, but many of us have reviewed Judge 
White's record and were greatly troubled by his dissenting opinions in 
several death penalty cases. In these cases Judge White displayed a 
real inclination to overturn death sentences, even when they were 
called for by law.
  For instance in the Johnson case, the defendant was convicted on four 
counts of first-degree murder for killing three officers and the wife 
of the sheriff. Johnson was sentenced to death on all counts. On 
appeal, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the decision, but Judge White 
dissented arguing for a new trial based on ineffective assistance of 
counsel. Judge White thought that Johnson deserved further opportunity 
to present a defense based on post-traumatic stress disorder. But the 
majority showed that there was no credible evidence that Johnson 
suffered from this disorder. Rather, it was clear that defense counsel 
had fabricated a story that was quickly disproved at trial. For 
instance, defense counsel stated that Johnson had placed a perimeter of 
cans and strings and had deflated the tires of his car. At trial, 
testimony revealed that police officers had taken these actions, not 
the defendant.
  Further, Congressman Kenneth Hulshof, the prosecutor in the Johnson 
case testified at Senator Ashcroft's hearings that it was almost 
impossible to make out an argument for ineffective assistance of 
counsel because the defendant ``hired counsel of his own choosing. He 
picked from our area in mid-Missouri what . . . I referred to as a 
dream team.''
  Judge White has every right to pen a dissent in Johnson and other 
cases involving the death penalty. Similarly, every senator has the 
duty to evaluate these opinions as part of Judge White's judicial 
record. And that's just what Senator Ashcroft did. At no time did 
Senator Ashcroft derogate Judge White's background.
  I consider Judge White to be a decent man with an impressive personal 
background. He has accomplished a great deal and come up from humble 
beginnings. But his record of dissenting in death penalty cases 
troubled me enough to vote against his confirmation.
  Many of my colleagues have impugned Senator Ashcroft's motives for 
voting against Judge White. But Judge White's nomination was strongly 
opposed by many of Senator Ashcroft's constituents and also by major 
law enforcement groups, including the National Sheriffs' Association 
and the Missouri Federation of Police Chiefs.
  Sheriff Kenny Jones, whose wife and colleagues were killed by 
Johnson, testified, ``I opposed Judge White's nomination to the federal 
bench, and I asked Senator Ashcroft to join me because of Judge White's 
opinion on a death penalty case . . . In his opinion, Judge White urged 
that Johnson be given a second chance at freedom. I cannot understand 
his reasoning. I know that the four people killed were not given a 
second chance.''
  Since his nomination for a federal judgship was defeated, Judge White 
has continued to dissent in criminal cases. For example, in Missouri v. 
Johns, 2000 WL 1779262, Dec. 5, 2000, a jury sentenced the defendant 
Johns to death for a murder in which he shot the victim seven times, 
including a fatal shot to the head. Following this murder, Johns evaded 
capture for six months, during which time he committed two more murders 
and several robberies. When finally located by authorities, Johns took 
a hostage, placed a gun to her head, and threaten to kill her.
  Johns confessed to the initial killing, but claimed that he did so in 
self-defense, despite the fact that he shot the victim seven times. In 
addition, Johns confessed to the robbery and murder of the two other 
victims during his flight from justice.
  During the trial, Johns tried to introduce evidence that the victim 
had a violent reputation, but the trial court excluded the proffered 
evidence on the grounds of relevancy. On appeal, Johns argued that the 
inability to admit evidence of the victim's reputation harmed his 
theory of self-defense.
  In the Missouri Supreme Court, a 5-2 majority ruled that the trial 
court did not commit reversible error and upheld the verdict and 
sentence. Judge White, however, joined a dissent with only one other 
judge which argued that ``Johns was deprived of a fair trial with 
respect to his self-defense theory.''
  Like the defendant in Missouri v. Johnson, the defendant in Missouri 
v. Johns murdered several people and confessed to the killings. There 
was no doubt about the defendant's guilt in either case, yet Judge 
White dissented and would have granted a new trial to both defendants.
  I bring up the recent case of Missouri v. Johns not to criticize 
Judge White or reargue his nomination. Instead, I mention this decision 
only to show that there was a legitimate basis for Senator Ashcroft's 
concerns about Judge White in death penalty cases. Senator Ashcroft has 
made the very valid point that if Judge White had been confirmed as a 
federal district judge, he would have had enormous power to reverse 
state criminal convictions, including death penalty sentences, 
unilaterally because of the federal writ of habeas corpus.
  Finally, many of my colleagues have alleged that Senator Ashcroft's 
opposition to Judge White was underhanded and done with stealth. Well, 
Senator Ashcroft voted against Judge White's nomination in Committee. 
He expressed his disapproval at that time. If he had held up the 
nomination in Committee without allowing it to proceed to the floor he 
would have been criticized for delay.
  Indeed, Senator Boxer pleaded during a debate about several judges 
including Ronnie White, ``I beg of you, in the name of fairness and 
justice and all things that are good in our country, give people a 
chance. If you do not think they are good, if you have a problem with 
something they said or did, bring it down to the floor. We can debate 
it. But please do not hold up these nominees. It is wrong. You would 
not do it to a friend.'' (Cong. Rec. S. 11871, Oct. 4, 1999). Other 
Senators have repeatedly suggested that the Senate has ``subtle'' means 
of holding up nominees. But at the same time senators are rebuked for 
placing holds on nominees. Thus, Senator Ashcroft was between a rock 
and a hard place as to how to raise his legitimate concerns about Judge 
White.
  Senator Ashcroft is a man of tremendous integrity, one of the most 
qualified nominees for Attorney General that we have ever seen. His 
opposition to Judge White was principled and in keeping with the proper 
exercise of the advice and consent duty of a senator. I regret that we 
have needed to revisit this issue at such great length.
  Senator Ashcroft has also been unfairly criticized for opposing the 
nomination of Bill Lann Lee to head the Civil Rights Division of the 
Justice Department. Mr. Lee had a noted record of promoting and 
preserving race-conscious policies of questionable constitutionality. 
Opposition to Mr. Lee was not limited to Senator Ashcroft--nine 
Republicans on the Judiciary Committee opposed this nominee, including 
myself.
  I have the highest personal regard for Mr. Lee and the difficult 
circumstances in which his family came to this country, worked hard, 
and realized the American dream. Despite this high personal regard, I 
was deeply concerned about Mr. Lee's nomination because much of his 
career was devoted to preserving constitutionally suspect race-
conscious public policies that ultimately sort and divide citizens by 
race. At the time of his hearings, it was clear that he would have us 
continue down the road of racial spoils, a road on which Americans are 
seen principally through the looking glass of race.

[[Page 1256]]

  Senator Ashcroft did not distort Mr. Lee's testimony. When Mr. Lee 
stated the test of Adarand he said that the Supreme Court considered 
racial preference programs permissible if ``conducted in a limited and 
measured manner.'' While this might be correct in a narrow sense, it 
purposefully misses the main point of the Court's fundamental holding 
that such race-conscious programs are presumptively unconstitutional. 
Mr. Lee might have stated that strict scrutiny was the standard 
articulated in Adarand; however, when he described the content of this 
standard it was far looser than what the Supreme Court delineated. Mr. 
Lee's misleading description can properly be assailed as a fundamental 
mischaracterization of the law.
  Senator Ashcroft has stated that he opposed Mr. Lee because of his 
record of advocacy and his mischaracterization of Supreme Court 
precedent. The failure to recognize the established legal standard 
established by the Supreme Court would have serious effects on Mr. 
Lee's ability to serve as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. 
Senator Ashcroft's reasons for opposing Mr. Lee are amply supported by 
the record.
  Another area in which Senator Ashcroft has been unfairly attacked is 
his ability to enforce the law in areas related to abortion. Many of 
those opposing Senator Ashcroft have taken great pains to state that 
they do not oppose him because of his ideology, but then go on to say 
they cannot support him because of his positions on abortion issues. 
Isn't that ideology?
  Make no mistake about it, Senator Ashcroft has a consistent pro-life 
record. Contrary to what his opponents would have you believe, that is 
not extremist or ``out of the mainstream.'' Millions of Americans share 
the same view. In the end, what is important is Senator Ashcroft's 
commitment to enforce the law as its been interpreted by the Supreme 
Court--and not the policy positions he advocated as a legislator.
  While Senator Ashcroft's critics have spared nothing in their 
attempts to distort his record and create fear, Senator Ashcroft's 
record over 25 years as a public servant, and his testimony before the 
Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing, demonstrate his 
lifelong commitment to the rule of law and his respect for the uniquely 
different roles of a legislator and a law enforcer. Senator Ashcroft 
has proven that he can objectively interpret and enforce the law even 
where the law may diverge from his personal views on policy. His record 
and character demonstrate that he can be, as he has pledged, ``law 
oriented and not results oriented.''
  Contrary to the fear-mongering of his critics, Senator Ashcroft will 
enforce the law protecting a woman's right to an abortion. He was very 
straightforward in his testimony before the Judiciary Committee when he 
stated that, in his view, Roe v. Wade is settled law and that the 
Supreme Court's decisions upholding Roe ``have been multiple, they have 
been recent and they have been emphatic.'' He said he would enforce the 
law as interpreted by the Supreme Court.
  When asked whether he would seek to change the Supreme Court's 
interpretation of the law, Senator Ashcroft stated that ``it is not the 
agenda of the President-elect to seek an opportunity to overturn Roe. 
And as his Attorney General, I don't think it could be my agenda to 
seek an opportunity to overturn Roe.'' He also stated that as Attorney 
General, it wouldn't be his job to ``try and alter the position of the 
administration.''
  Senator Ashcroft clearly recognized the importance of not devaluing 
``the currency'' of the Solicitor General's Office by taking matters to 
the Supreme Court on a basis the Court has already stated it does not 
want to entertain. He noted that in this way, ``accepting Roe and Casey 
as settled law is important, not just to this arena, but important in 
terms of the credibility of the Department.'' He said he would give 
advice based upon sound legal analysis, not ideology or personal 
beliefs. He made a commitment that ``if the law provides something that 
is contrary to my ideological belief, I will provide them with that 
same best judgment of the law.''
  From Senator Ashcroft, those are not just words. Throughout his 
career, he has demonstrated that he can do just that. For example, as 
Missouri Attorney General, Senator Ashcroft did not let his personal 
opinion on abortion cloud his legal analysis. He protected the 
confidentiality of abortion records maintained by the Missouri 
Department of Health even when they were requested by pro-life groups.
  Likewise, when asked to determine whether a death certificate was 
required for all abortions, regardless of the age of the fetus, 
Attorney General Ashcroft--despite his personal view that life begins 
at conception issued an opinion that Missouri law did not require any 
type of certificate if the fetus was 20 weeks old or less. His legal 
analysis was fair and objective and unaffected by what his policy views 
may have been. There has also been, what I consider, unfounded 
skepticism over whether Senator Ashcroft would vigorously enforce 
clinic access and anti-violence statutes. Being pro-life is not 
inconsistent with opposing violence at clinics. The primary focus of 
the opposition has been the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act 
or ``FACE''. Senator Ashcroft supports the FACE law, and always has.
  Senator Ashcroft testified specifically on how he would enforce FACE 
and other clinic access and anti-violence laws. He stated clearly that 
he would enforce these laws ``vigorously'', that he would investigate 
allegations ``thoroughly'' and that he would devote resources to these 
cases on a ``priority basis.'' He further stated that he would maintain 
the appropriate Task Forces which have been created to facilitate 
enforcement of clinic access and anti-violence statutes. These 
statements are totally consistent with Senator Ashcroft's long record 
of speaking out against violence and his belief that the First 
Amendment does not give anyone the right to ``violate the person, 
safety and security'' of another.
  Senator Ashcroft has always spoken out against clinic violence and 
other forms of domestic terrorism. He has written to constituents about 
his strong opposition to violence and his belief that, regardless of 
his personal views on abortion, people should be able to enter abortion 
clinics safely. He voted for Senator Schumer's amendment to the 
Bankruptcy bill that made debts incurred as a result of abortion clinic 
violence non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.
  Senator Ashcroft has always condemned criminal violence at abortion 
clinics--or anywhere for that matter--and believes people who commit 
these acts of violence and intimidation should be punished to the 
fullest extent of the law. As Attorney General he'll do just that.
  Access to contraceptives is another area that I think Senator 
Ashcroft has been unfairly criticized. His critics make dire 
predictions about the future that are totally unsupported by Senator 
Ashcroft's testimony. Senator Ashcroft could not have testified any 
more clearly on the issue of contraception. He stated that: ``I think 
individuals who want to use contraceptives have every right to do so . 
. . [and] I think that right is guaranteed by the Constitution of the 
United States.'' He also testified that he would defend current laws 
should they be attacked. What more can he say? Is there anything a pro-
life nominee could say to please the pro-abortion interest groups?
  Senator Ashcroft's opponents argue that someone who has been active 
in advocating a particular policy position cannot set that aside and 
enforce the law fairly. I don't believe they can be serious. Does this 
mean that a person of character and integrity who had been active in 
the pro-choice movement could never be Attorney General? And what about 
the death penalty? Could we have no future Attorney General, regardless 
of how honest and well-qualified, who opposed the death penalty? Of 
course not. In fact, Republicans voted to confirm Janet Reno, despite 
her personal opposition to the death penalty, because she said she 
could still enforce the law even though she disagreed with it.

[[Page 1257]]

  If this is not about ideology, then we should get to the business of 
confirming Senator Ashcroft. He has given strong and specific 
assurances to the Senate on abortion questions. These assurances are 
backed up by his proven record as Missouri Attorney General and 
Governor. Most importantly, they are backed up by Senator Ashcroft's 
personal integrity and decency characteristics known personally by 
almost every member of this body.
  I was quite surprised to hear Senator Ashcroft's opponents criticize 
his work on behalf of faith-based organizations that everyone 
recognizes do remarkable good works in every community across this 
nation. Senator Ashcroft has participated in and encouraged these 
programs at both a personal and policy level.
  I think we should be proud of Senator Ashcroft's efforts to assist 
the disadvantaged. Senator Ashcroft was the author of the charitable 
choice provision in the landmark Welfare Reform Act of 1996. That 
provision encourages faith-based organizations to participate in the 
welfare reform effort on the same basis as secular organizations. As a 
result, faith-based groups can now, for example, conduct drug-treatment 
and job placement programs for the poor. These programs and other 
similar faith-based programs have proved remarkably successful. As the 
noted civil rights activist Robert Woodson testified before the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, Senator Ashcroft's charitable choice legislation 
``may do more to help blacks solve the real problems in their own 
communities than anything else government has done.''
  Some critics claim that Senator Ashcroft's charitable choice 
provision violates the separation of church and state embodied in the 
First Amendment. These criticisms, however, are misplaced. The 
charitable choice law states that no federal funds ``shall be expended 
for sectarian worship, instruction, or proselytization.'' Moreover, the 
charitable choice law relies on Supreme Court precedents to clarify 
what is constitutionally permissible when state and local governments 
cooperate with religious and charitable organizations. The charitable 
choice law also allows beneficiaries who object to the religious 
character of the organization to receive assistance from an alternative 
provider.
  During last year's Presidential campaign of 2000, both President 
George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore supported the charitable 
choice law as a means to empower faith-based charities. As President 
Bush recently said: ``A compassionate society is one which recognizes 
the great power of faith. We in government must not fear faith-based 
programs, we must welcome faith-based programs.''
  Thanks in large part to Senator Ashcroft's leadership, President Bush 
will be able to expand the role of faith-based charities in fighting 
poverty, addiction and other social ills. Based on the charitable 
choice law, President Bush created an Office of Faith-Based and 
Community Initiatives in the White House last week. This office will be 
led by the prominent University of Pennsylvania professor John DiIulio. 
In short, the charitable choice law was one of Senator Ashcroft's most 
important legislative accomplishments and something that should weigh 
in favor of his nomination, not against it.
  The criticism leveled against Senator Ashcroft on Charitable Choice 
suggests the possibility of an even more dangerous problem, religious 
intolerance. Article VI of our Constitution, while requiring that 
Officers of the government swear to support the constitution, assures 
us that ``no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification 
to any Office or public Trust under the United States.'' I fear that in 
considering the nomination of John Ashcroft to be Attorney General of 
the United States, some are coming very close to violating the spirit, 
if not the letter of that assurance.
  In response to a question I posed to Senator Ashcroft about the wide 
disparity of treatment accorded him as a person of faith and that 
accorded to Senator Lieberman when he was running for Vice President, 
and whether anything in his faith background would interfere with his 
ability to apply the law as critics had charged, Senator Ashcroft said:

       In examining my understanding and my commitment and my 
     faith heritage, I'd have to say that my faith heritage 
     compels me to enforce the law and abide by the law rather 
     than to violate the law. And if in some measure somehow I 
     were to encounter a situation where the two came into 
     conflict so that I could not respond to this faith heritage 
     which requires me to enforce the law, then I would have to 
     resign.

  Those looking for reassurance that Senator Ashcroft will enforce the 
law as written need look no further than this brief paragraph. Senator 
Ashcroft's critics and supporters alike uniformly agree that he is a 
man who takes his faith seriously. If he says his faith compels him to 
abide by the law, I think his promise carries great weight. As he said 
in his opening statement, he takes his oath of office seriously, it 
being a sacred and solemn obligation. Nevertheless, he has been 
attacked as a dangerous zealot by many of his opponents, who suggest 
that his faith will require him to violate the law, or as a liar who 
cannot be trusted because he says he will swear to uphold the law. 
Well, his critics cannot have it both ways. Apparently, his critics do 
not understand either a faith that transcends politics and grasping 
after power or the distinction between being an advocate for change in 
the law and being an impartial magistrate to apply the law.
  The Attorney General is perhaps the most important position in the 
President's cabinet. The Department of Justice has a long and storied 
history. It represents all Americans in the pursuit of justice. As 
such, the Department of Justice demands an Attorney General with great 
ability, integrity, and judgment. John Ashcroft has all these 
qualities.
  Senator Ashcroft's abilities are demonstrated by the fact he was 
elected to statewide office five times in Missouri, a classic swing 
state in America's political landscape. As Attorney General and 
Governor of Missouri, John Ashcroft served with distinction and built a 
record of public service and devotion to the rule of law. He continued 
that proud service representing Missouri in the United States Senate. 
His leadership and integrity has been recognized by people in both 
political parties throughout his career. He was elected President of 
the National Association of Attorneys General by his fellow state 
attorneys general. As Governor of Missouri, John Ashcroft was elected 
Chairman of the National Governors Association by his fellow governors. 
Each time John Ashcroft was elected to these prestigious positions, the 
majority of state attorneys general and governors were Democrats. The 
fact that he was chosen to lead these organizations while in the 
minority party is a testament to his integrity and ability. Mr. 
President, John Ashcroft is the most qualified nominee for Attorney 
General in history. We are fortunate to have him as a nominee. I look 
forward to his stewardship of the Department of Justice.
  Mr. President, much of the debate over the nomination of John 
Ashcroft has focused only on a few important issues, but those are not 
the only important issues central to the core mission of the Department 
of Justice. I believe the Senate would be well-served to consider the 
Ashcroft nomination in light of all of the important duties of the 
Attorney General. When this debate is placed in the proper perspective, 
it becomes even more obvious how qualified Senator Ashcroft is to be 
the next Attorney General of the United States.
  The Department of Justice was established by Congress in 1870. It is 
the largest law firm in the United States with 123,000 employees and an 
annual budget of approximately $21 billion. Through its thousands of 
lawyers, agents, and investigators, the Justice Department plays a 
vital role in fighting violent crime and drug trafficking, ensuring 
business competition in the marketplace, and enforcing immigration and 
naturalization laws. Consider the following major components of the 
Justice Department in light of the qualifications of Senator Ashcroft:

[[Page 1258]]

  The Civil Rights Division was established in 1957 to secure the 
effective enforcement of civil rights for all Americans. The Civil 
Rights Division is responsible for enforcing federal statutes that 
prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, gender, disability, 
religion, and national origin. In order to enforce these landmark laws, 
the Civil Rights Division engages in a variety of litigation to fight 
discrimination in employment, housing and immigration. In particular, 
the litigation brought by the Civil Rights Division under the Voting 
Rights Act has had a profound influence on the electoral landscape in 
the last three decades.
  As Senator Ashcroft stated at his confirmation hearing: ``No part of 
the Department of Justice is more important than the Civil Rights 
Division.'' John Ashcroft vigorously enforced civil rights laws as the 
Attorney General and Governor of Missouri. He signed Missouri's first 
hate crimes statute. Not content to wait for the legislature to act, 
John Ashcroft made Missouri one of the first States to recognize Martin 
Luther King Day by issuing an executive order. He also led the fight to 
save Lincoln University, the university in Missouri founded by African-
American Civil War veterans.
  As the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee in the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, Senator Ashcroft held the first hearing on racial 
profiling in the history of Congress. When asked at his confirmation 
hearing about his priorities for the Justice Department, Senator 
Ashcroft cited the abolition of racial profiling as one of his top two 
priorities.
  Senator Ashcroft stated at his confirmation hearing that the 
paramount civil right is personal safety. The Attorney General is 
America's chief law enforcement officer, and managing the Criminal 
Division is the most important aspect of the Attorney General's duties. 
The Criminal Division oversees thousands of federal agents and is 
charged with, among other things, investigating and prosecuting drug 
dealers, illegal gun traffickers, bank robbers, child pornographers, 
computer hackers, and terrorists. The Criminal Division has a visible 
and tangible effect on the lives of all Americans.
  I have no doubt that, given his vast experience as a public servant, 
Senator Ashcroft understands and appreciates the mission of the 
Criminal Division. Throughout his long career as Missouri Attorney 
General, Missouri Governor, and United States Senator, Senator Ashcroft 
has been a strong advocate of tough and effective criminal law 
enforcement.
  Perhaps the greatest threat facing our nation today is the scourge of 
illegal drugs. For years, Senator Ashcroft has been a leader in the 
fight against illegal drugs. In 1996, Senator Ashcroft helped me enact 
the Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act, which increased 
penalties for the manufacture and trafficking of methamphetamine. 
Senator Ashcroft also helped enact federal laws that increased 
mandatory minimum sentences for methamphetamine offenses and authorized 
courts to order persons convicted of methamphetamine offenses to pay 
for the costs of laboratory cleanup. Last year, Senator Ashcroft 
authored legislation to target additional resources to local law 
enforcement agencies to fight methamphetamine.
  Senator Ashcroft also understands that drug treatment and prevention 
are vital components of an effective drug strategy. In last year's 
methamphetamine legislation, Senator Ashcroft included funding for drug 
education and prevention programs, including resources for school-based 
anti-methamphetamine initiatives. As Attorney General and Governor of 
Missouri, Senator Ashcroft increased funding for anti-drug programs by 
almost 40%, the vast majority of which was for education, prevention 
and treatment.
  During his confirmation hearing, Senator Ashcroft has also made clear 
that prosecuting gun crimes will be a top priority of the Ashcroft 
Justice Department. Unfortunately, gun prosecutions have not always 
been a priority for the Department of Justice. For example, between 
1992 and 1998, prosecutions of defendants who use a firearm in the 
commission of a felony dropped nearly 50 percent, from 7,045 to 
approximately 3,800. In the Senate, John Ashcroft was one of the 
leaders in fighting gun crimes. To reverse the decline in gun 
prosecutions by the Justice Department, Senator Ashcroft sponsored 
legislation to authorize $50 million to hire additional federal 
prosecutors and agents to increase the federal prosecution of criminals 
who use guns.
  In addition, Senator Ashcroft authored legislation to prohibit 
juveniles from possessing assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition 
clips. The Senate overwhelmingly passed the Ashcroft juvenile assault 
weapons ban in May of 1999.
  Senator Ashcroft voted for legislation that prohibits any person 
convicted of even misdemeanor acts of domestic violence from possessing 
a firearm, and he voted for legislation to extend the Brady Act to 
prohibit persons who commit violent crimes as juveniles from possessing 
firearms. In order to close the so-called ``gun show loophole,'' 
Senator Ashcroft voted for legislation, which I authored, to require 
mandatory instant background checks for all firearm purchases at gun 
shows.
  In order to maintain tough federal penalties, Senator Ashcroft 
sponsored legislation to require a five-year mandatory minimum prison 
sentence for federal gun crimes and for legislation to encourage 
schools to expel students who bring guns to school. Senator Ashcroft 
voted for the ``Gun-Free Schools Zone Act'' that prohibits the 
possession of a firearm in a school zone, and he voted for legislation 
to require gun dealers to offer child safety locks and other gun safety 
devices for sale. I have no doubt that with John Ashcroft as Attorney 
General, the Justice Department will target and prosecute gun crimes 
with unprecedented zeal.
  To his credit, Senator Ashcroft understands that the vast majority of 
criminal law enforcement takes place at the state and local level. 
Given his tenure as Missouri Attorney General and Governor, Senator 
Ashcroft appreciates the important role that the federal government can 
play in supporting state and local authorities by providing resources 
and training. He also understands that the Justice Department should 
provide such support without intruding into traditional areas of state 
sovereignty.
  In the Senate, Senator Ashcroft steadfastly supported state and local 
law enforcement. He won enactment of a bill that extends higher 
education financial assistance to spouses and dependent children of law 
enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. He was the principal 
proponent of the ``Care for Police Survivors Act,'' a measure that 
increases benefits to the survivors of public safety officers killed in 
the line of duty. Along with Senator Biden, Senator Ashcroft co-
sponsored legislation to reauthorize the COPS program.
  In addition, Senator Ashcroft cosponsored the ``Local Law Enforcement 
Enhancement Act of 1995.'' This act allocated $1 billion to state and 
local law enforcement to update and computerize criminal records, 
automated fingerprint systems, and DNA identification operations. John 
Ashcroft also cosponsored the ``21st Century Justice Act'' which 
included Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing 
Incentive Grants. These grants have provided federal resources to 
States to build prisons to incarcerate violent and repeat offenders. 
Given his record, it is no surprise that law enforcement groups such as 
the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriff's Association, the 
International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National District 
Attorneys Association, and the National Association of Police 
Organizations are united in their support for Senator Ashcroft's 
nomination.
  The Civil Division represents the United States government, including 
executive departments and agencies, in civil litigation. First and 
foremost, the Civil Division defends the constitutionality of federal 
statutes, regulations, and executive orders. The Civil Division also 
litigates complex commercial cases. This litigation is especially 
important for property rights because the Civil Division represents the

[[Page 1259]]

federal government against claims that private property was taken for 
public use without just compensation. In addition, the Civil Division 
represents the federal government in consumer litigation under various 
consumer protection and public health statutes.
  Senator Ashcroft's experience as the Attorney General of Missouri 
prepared him well to oversee the Civil Division. John Ashcroft 
established the Consumer Affairs Division in the Missouri Attorney 
General's office. He brought many consumer protection actions, 
including odometer tampering cases and financial pyramid schemes. In 
Illinois v. Abbott & Associates, Inc., Attorney General Ashcroft filed 
a brief in the United States Supreme Court supporting the right of 
state attorneys general to conduct antitrust investigations. In the 
Senate, John Ashcroft helped enact legislation to combat telemarketing 
scams against senior citizens.
  Created in 1909, the Environment and Natural Resources Division is 
the Nation's chief environmental lawyer. It is responsible for 
litigating cases ranging from the protection of endangered species to 
the cleanup of hazardous waste sites. In addition to prosecuting 
environmental crimes, the Environment and Natural Resources Division 
ensures that federal environmental laws are implemented in a fair and 
consistent manner.
  As Missouri Attorney General, John Ashcroft aggressively enforced 
that state's environmental protection laws. To cite but a few examples, 
Attorney General Ashcroft brought suit to prevent an electric company 
from causing oxygen levels in downstream waters to harm fish. He also 
sought to recover damages from the electric company.
  Attorney General Ashcroft brought a successful action against the 
owner of an apartment complex for violations of the Missouri Clean 
Water Law relating to treatment of waste water, and he sued the owner 
of a trailer park for violations of the Missouri Clean Water Law.
  As Missouri Attorney General, Senator Ashcroft also filed numerous 
briefs in the United States Supreme Court that advanced environmental 
protections. For example:
  In Pacific Gas & Electric Co. v. State Energy Resources Conservation 
& Development Commission, Attorney General Ashcroft filed a brief 
supporting a California law that conditioned the construction of 
nuclear power plants on findings that adequate storage and disposal 
facilities are available.
  In Sporhase v. Nebraska, Attorney General Ashcroft endorsed the State 
of Nebraska's effort to stop defendants from transporting Nebraska 
groundwater into Colorado without a permit.
  In Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 
Inc., Attorney General Ashcroft filed a brief supporting the Natural 
Resources Defense Council's position on tougher environmental 
regulations relating to storage of nuclear wastes.
  As Missouri Attorney General, John Ashcroft issued numerous legal 
opinions that furthered the enforcement of environmental laws. I would 
like to describe a few of these formal opinions. In Attorney General 
Opinion No. 123-84, Attorney General Ashcroft issued an opinion that 
underground injection wells constitute pollution of the waters of the 
state and are subject to regulation by the Missouri Department of 
Natural Resources under the state's Clean Water Act. Attorney General 
Ashcroft also opined that it would be unlawful to build or operate such 
a well unless a permit had been obtained from the Clean Water 
Commission.
  In Attorney General Opinion No. 67, Attorney General Ashcroft issued 
an opinion that operators of surface mines must obtain a permit for 
each year that the mine was un-reclaimed. In reaching this opinion, 
Attorney General Ashcroft determined that the operator of the mine must 
have a permit continuously from the time mining operations begin until 
reclamation of the site is complete. Attorney General Ashcroft 
concluded that the continuous permit requirement facilitated Missouri's 
intention ``to protect and promote the health, safety and general 
welfare of the people of this state, and to protect the natural 
resources of the state from environmental harm.''
  In Attorney General Opinion No. 189, Attorney General Ashcroft issued 
an opinion that Missouri's cities and counties had the authority to 
require that all solid waste be disposed of at approved solid waste 
recovery facilities, rather than be buried in landfills. In rendering 
his opinion, Attorney General Ashcroft gave credence to the arguments 
that ``recycling of solid wastes results in fewer health hazards and 
pollution problems than does disposal of the same types of wastes in 
landfills'' and that ``public welfare is better served by burning solid 
wastes for generation of electricity, thus conserving scarce natural 
resources.'' To those who have irresponsibly charged that Senator 
Ashcroft will not enforce our environmental laws, I say this: Look at 
his record.
  In conclusion, there are other offices in the Justice Department that 
are also very important. In the interest of time, however, I have 
focused on a select few. My point today is a simple one when this 
nomination is considered in light of the mission of the Department of 
Justice, it becomes apparent how well-qualified John Ashcroft is to be 
Attorney General. I look forward to his stewardship of the Department 
of Justice.
  Mr. President, I rise to respond to mischaracterizations about John 
Ashcroft's role in the James Hormel nomination, and about John 
Ashcroft's public record of fairness with respect to employment of 
people.
  Let me say at the outset that I supported James Hormel's nomination 
as Ambassador to Luxembourg. I thought he was qualified for that post. 
At the same time, however, I respected the fact that others in this 
body, including Senator Ashcroft, did not share my opinion. I cannot 
conclude--as some people have--that because Senator Ashcroft and I 
disagreed, that Senator Ashcroft's views, which were based on the 
totality of the record, were not valid. I have been in public service 
long enough to understand that thoughtful people can have honest 
differences of opinion on such matters without holding unsupportable or 
fundamentally biased points of view.
  Now, there has been a great deal of confusion about Senator John 
Ashcroft's role in the Hormel nomination. Outside special interest 
groups--which are trying to derail Senator Ashcroft's nomination--have 
accused him of singlehandedly blocking or stopping James Hormel's 
nomination simply because of Hormel's sexual orientation. These charges 
are false. Although, as John Ashcroft told the Judiciary Committee, he 
voted against the nomination when it came to a vote in the Foreign 
Relations Committee, he did nothing to stop that nomination. John 
Ashcroft did not block a Senate vote on Mr. Hormel's nomination, and he 
did not vote against that nomination on the floor because it never came 
to the floor.
  So let's look beyond the smokescreen of unsupported innuendo to 
examine what we really know about John Ashcroft. During the 
confirmation hearings, Senator Leahy asked John Ashcroft directly about 
his motives with respect to the James Hormel nomination. Senator Leahy 
asked, ``Did you block his nomination from coming to a vote because he 
is gay?'' And Senator Ashcroft said, ``I did not.'' He could not have 
been more clear. And when a man of John Ashcroft's integrity makes such 
a clear statement, we should take him at his word. Still, however, 
several Senators have repeated the unsupported allegation that 
Ashcroft's sole reason for voting against Hormel is that Hormel is gay.
  Some opponents of John Ashcroft are taking the position of using his 
Hormel nomination vote to paint a false portrait of a man who acts in a 
biased way towards homosexuals. But there is absolutely no evidence in 
the record to support that accusation. Senator Ashcroft made it very 
clear, both during his hearing and in his responses to numerous written 
questions, that ``sexual orientation has never been something that I've 
used in hiring in any of the jobs, in any of the offices I've held.''
  In an effort to cloud this crystal-clear statement, the forces 
opposing

[[Page 1260]]

Ashcroft presented to the media a man named Paul Offner, who claimed 
that John Ashcroft asked him about sexual orientation 16 years ago in 
an interview. Mr. Offner's accusations have been entirely rebutted not 
only by Senator Ashcroft but also by two eyewitnesses present during 
that interview, both of whom have said that John Ashcroft never asked 
Mr. Offner--or any of the many other people he interviewed for jobs--
about sexual preference. Carl Koupal, who sat in on numerous interviews 
with John Ashcroft as head of Ashcroft's gubernatorial transition team, 
said, ``I can say John Ashcroft did not ask that question of him or any 
other candidate we spoke to.'' Another Ashcroft aide, Duncan Kincheloe, 
said, ``It's inconceivable to me, and I'm certain I would remember if 
it had been asked. I've never heard him ask about that, and I've sat 
through dozens and dozens of interviews with him.'' This evidence 
should lay to rest questions related to the uncorroborated charges of 
Mr. Offner.
  At least one Senator, however, continues to ignore the facts and draw 
out the innuendo. That Senator said that Mr. Offner's allegations--even 
if untrue--would not have had any resonance if it were not for a 
history of unfairness. But that Senator has presented absolutely no 
evidence of any such history. Not a single person has come forward with 
a credible story of unfairness in John Ashcroft's 30-year public life, 
during which he conducted hundreds if not thousands of interviews and 
meetings, and made many hiring and firing decisions. Given all the 
public attention to this issue, and all of the league of special 
interest powerful lobbyists who are working hard to find just one 
witness against John Ashcroft, the absence of such a witness speaks 
loudly and clearly.
  In addition to his 30-year record of fairness, we also have Senator 
Ashcroft's clear pledge for the future. He told the Judiciary Committee 
in no uncertain terms that he ``will enforce the law equally without 
regard to sexual orientation if appointed and confirmed as attorney 
general.'' He also promised that sexual preference ``will not be a 
consideration in hiring at the Department of Justice'' if he is 
confirmed. And this statement reflects more than his promise to uphold 
current policy; it reflects John Ashcroft's own judgment. He said, 
``even if the executive order [barring the consideration of sexual 
orientation as relevant to hiring] would be repealed, I would still not 
consider sexual orientation in hiring at the Department of Justice 
because I don't believe it relevant to the responsibilities.'' Now, 
that is a very strong statement, Mr. President. Especially because it 
comes from a person of unquestioned integrity.
  The facts that I have just described convince me completely that John 
Ashcroft, once confirmed, will always act fairly in his law enforcement 
decisions and hiring decisions to people regardless of sexual 
orientation.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print an op-ed from the 
Wall Street Journal from today.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 1, 2001]

                          The Hormel Democrats

       With Bill Clinton having split for Chappaqua with the 
     Spielberg china, Democrats have a chance to present a new 
     image to the public. Yet by opposing John Ashcroft for 
     Attorney General, Senate Democrats seem intent on reminding 
     Middle America why it voted against Al Gore.
       Some of our readers may already have seen the nearby map of 
     America breaking down the vote in the last election. Mr. Gore 
     won the two left coasts, the latte towns and tonier suburbs, 
     and remnants of the progressive upper Midwest. President Bush 
     won everything else. The map reflects a country divided by 
     culture, with the traditionalist middle rejecting the 
     anything-goes mores of the Clinton years.
       Well, here we go again, with the same culturally liberal 
     interests groups who ordered around Mr. Gore now making the 
     Ashcroft vote a litmus test for Senate Democrats. NARAL, NOW, 
     People for the American Way and the rest know they can't 
     defeat him. But they're twisting arms behind the scenes to 
     get as large a negative vote as possible, as a way to show 
     their muscle and to warn Mr. Bush not to name any 
     conservatives to the Supreme Court.
       The problem for many Democrats, however, is that voters may 
     notice the company they're keeping. Barbara Boxer, the super-
     liberal from California, was the first Senate Democrat to 
     declare against Mr. Ashcroft. Ted Kennedy followed close 
     behind, this week joined by Pat Leahy from the Swedish 
     Republic of Vermont and the noted moderate from the great 
     state of New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton. This may all be 
     thrilling news in Hollywood and Manhattan. But we wonder how 
     this brand of Democratic leadership is going to look in, say, 
     Georgia, Montana or South Dakota.
       Especially because this time the liberal Borking strategy 
     has been a bust. First the interest groups played the race 
     card, but not even rejected judicial nominee Ronnie White 
     would say that Mr. Ashcroft was racially motivated. The 
     debate over Judge White had been about crime, specifically 
     the death penalty, and Democrats sure didn't want to be soft 
     on that. Then the opposition tried the gender/abortion card, 
     but Mr. Ashcroft defused that one by pledging to enforce even 
     laws he dislikes.
       The latest attack line has been to suggest that Mr. 
     Ashcroft is a relentless gay basher. Democrats went to the 
     unusual lengths of calling in the recently returned U.S. 
     ambassador to Luxembourg, James Hormel, to allege that in 
     opposing his nomination to be ambassador Mr. Ashcroft had 
     shown himself to be intolerant. In fact, fellow Republican 
     Tim Hutchinson admitted that he (and not Mr. Ashcroft) was 
     the Senator who had placed a hold on Mr. Hormel, who also 
     helped to found the Human Rights Campaign, the gay lobby that 
     has tried to stigmatize the Boy Scouts.
       If nothing else, the Hormel matter certainly is instructive 
     about our current cultural divide. Liberals want to make 
     homosexuality not just a matter of tolerance but essentially 
     a qualification for office: Oppose a gay nominee and you're 
     automatically a bigot.
       Never mind that Mr. Hormel was also opposed by the U.S. 
     Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights because he had 
     pronounced himself amused at the public mockery of the 
     Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a notorious anti-Catholic 
     gay group. ``When Senator Tim Hutchinson gave James Hormel 
     the opportunity to denounce anti-Catholicism, Hormel refused 
     to do so,'' wrote William Donohue of the Catholic League in 
     1998. Luxembourg is more than 90% Catholic.
       Mr. Hormel claims he was misrepresented, and maybe he was. 
     But the politics of ``tolerance'' cuts both ways, and there's 
     no denying that the modern gay-rights agenda has moved beyond 
     mere peaceful co-existence to mock and stigmatize traditional 
     religion. Catholics have been a special target because of the 
     Pope's refusal to bend the church's centuries-old belief that 
     homosexual acts are sinful. Mr. Hormel's critics were merely 
     using the kind of identity politics that liberals have used 
     for years.
       The news is that so many Senators are nonetheless lining up 
     to be Hormel Democrats. It's no accident that both North 
     Dakota Democrats, the usually hyper-partisan Byron Dorgan and 
     Kent Conrad, came out early for Mr. Ashcroft. George Bush won 
     their state by two-to-one. But all of the potential 
     Democratic presidential candidates seem to be falling into 
     opposition line: Hillary of course, and even Indiana's Evan 
     Bayh. Joe Lieberman is still pondering from Mt. Olympus.
       Mr. Lieberman might reflect that following the liberal line 
     didn't help him or his running mate last year. Democrats lost 
     the White House, despite peace and prosperity, because Middle 
     America didn't share their cultural values. Lining up against 
     John Ashcroft won't help win them back.

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I want to respond to an unfair and untrue 
statement made on the floor of the Senate about John Ashcroft's work to 
combat the practice of racial profiling.
  Senator Ashcroft has a good record on the issue of racial profiling. 
It was Senator Ashcroft's decision to hold the first-ever congressional 
hearing on the topic, a decision that Senator Feingold, who is an 
expert on the issue in his own right, appropriately acknowledged during 
the confirmation hearings. Senator Feingold reported that Senator 
Ashcroft and his staff ``not only permitted, but assisted in a 
significant and powerful hearing on racial profiling in the 
Constitution subcommittee.''
  Those who attempt to downgrade the importance of that hearing have 
failed to understand that Senator Ashcroft's motives are genuine. 
Senator Ashcroft opposes injustice of all kinds. As he explained in his 
opening statement to the Judiciary Committee, ``[f]rom racial profiling 
to news of unwarranted strip searches, the list of injustice in America 
today is still long. Injustice in America against any individual must 
not stand; this is the special charge of the U.S. Department of 
Justice.''
  Senator Ashcroft made clear that his efforts to combat racial 
profiling will

[[Page 1261]]

continue if he is confirmed as Attorney General. In response to Senator 
Feingold's direct question ``will you make racial profiling a priority 
of yours?'', John Ashcroft pledged, ``I will make racial profiling a 
priority of mine.'' He could not have been more clear. And he was 
equally lucid when describing the basis for his views. He said, ``I 
think racial profiling is wrong. I think it's unconstitutional. I think 
it violates the 14th Amendment.'' These are powerful words when spoken 
by a man such as John Ashcroft who is committed to enforcing the rule 
of law.
  Senator Ashcroft's views on racial profiling are part of his larger 
conception of the role of the Department of Justice on racial issues. 
Senator Ashcroft has pledged that, if confirmed, ``I would do my best 
never to allow a person to suffer solely on the basis of a person's 
race.'' He went on to say that ``it is important that the federal 
government be leading when it comes to respecting the rights of 
individuals and the Constitution. I will do everything I can to make 
sure that we lead properly in that respect.'' These are firm assurances 
from a man of integrity.
  As you can see, Mr. President, it is not only unfair but also 
inaccurate to portray Senator Ashcroft as insensitive to the issue of 
racial profiling. I hope my comments help to set the record straight.
  Mr. President, I would like to correct some misstatements that were 
made on the floor of the Senate concerning John Ashcroft's speech at 
Bob Jones University. There has been a real attempt here to wage a 
``guilt by association'' attack on Senator Ashcroft, and I want to set 
the record straight.
  John Ashcroft's visit to the school was not controversial when it 
occurred in May 1999. But early in 2000--approximately eight months 
after John Ashcroft's visit--Bob Jones University became a flash point 
during the primary election because opponents of then-Governor George 
W. Bush accused Governor Bush of associating with an anti-Catholic 
statement that appeared on the University's Internet site.
  Following the flap over Bush's visit, John Ashcroft said, ``I didn't 
really know they had these positions,'' and ``[f]rankly, I reject the 
anti-Catholic position of Bob Jones University categorically.''
  Despite having repudiated the offending statement, John Ashcroft 
faced a new round of criticism for his appearance after he was 
nominated to be Attorney General. The special interest groups aligned 
against him attempted to associate John Ashcroft with every form of 
bigotry and intolerance they could.
  But any controversy over John Ashcroft's speech at Bob Jones 
University should have been put to rest by John Ashcroft's testimony at 
his confirmation hearings. That's when we finally got the chance to ask 
Senator Ashcroft what he thought. And Senator Ashcroft made it clear 
that he ``reject[s] any racial intolerance or religious intolerance 
that has been associated with[,] or is associated with[,]'' Bob Jones 
University.
  Senator Ashcroft went on to explain that ``[he] want[s] to make it 
very clear that [he] reject[s] racial and religious intolerance.'' He 
said he does not endorse any bigoted views by virtue of ``having made 
an appearance in any faith or any congregation.'' He said, for example, 
that he has visited churches which do not ``allow women in certain 
roles,'' and that he does not endorse that view either.
  Apparently, Ashcroft's answer eliminated any doubt about his personal 
views. As Senator Leahy told Senator Ashcroft during the hearing, ``I 
made my position very clear yesterday on how I feel about you on any 
questions of racial or religious bias. I stated that neither I nor 
anybody on this committee would make that claim about you.'' Even 
Catholic groups were satisfied. A spokesperson for the Catholic League 
said, ``In short, the controversy over Ashcroft is much ado about 
nothing as far as the Catholic League is concerned.''
  Some outside groups had questioned the meaning of the speech that 
Senator Ashcroft gave during his visit to Bob Jones University. Senator 
Ashcroft explained during the confirmation hearing that ``the phrase, 
`We have no king but Jesus,' was a representation of what colonists 
were saying at the time of the American Revolution.'' He said that the 
point of his speech was ``the idea that the ultimate authority of the 
ultimate idea of freedom in America is not governmentally derived.'' I 
don't think anyone in the Senate would take issue with that. It is an 
understatement to say that this idea is well-documented in the 
Founders' writings.
  Some went in search of controversy by asking Senator Ashcroft if he 
would go to Bob Jones University again if invited as Attorney General. 
He said he would ``speak at places where [he] believes[s] [he] can 
unite people and move them in the right direction.'' In saying that, he 
contritely explained that his confirmation hearings--``and the prelude 
to th[o]se hearings''--taught him to be ``sensitive at a higher level 
now than [he] was before, that the attorney general in particular needs 
to be careful about what he or she does.'' Senator Ashcroft said that, 
if confirmed, he ``would be sensitive to accepting invitations so as to 
not allow a presumption to be made that I was endorsing things that 
would divide people instead of unite them.'' This answer apparently did 
not satisfy some of the committee who have since argued that he should 
have pledged never to return to the University.
  But as Senator Ashcroft explained at his hearing, it is shortsighted 
to make a pledge not to go somewhere just because you disagree with 
them. John Ashcroft pointed out that the Bob Jones University has 
``abandoned the policy on interracial dating which was offensive'' 
after that policy became a focus of attention last year. I think John 
Ashcroft was contrite about what he learned and correct not to rule out 
visiting places where he thinks his presence could be a force for 
positive change.
  Thank you for the opportunity to correct the misimpressions about 
this issue that were unfortunately created on the Senate floor.
  Mr. President, I feel compelled to address some of the misperceptions 
I fear may have been created by my colleagues in their comments about 
several aspects of Senator Ashcroft's record with regard to his role in 
antitrust litigation against politically-motivated boycotts and 
abortion when he was an elected official in Missouri.
  First, several of my colleagues have unfairly criticized Senator 
Ashcroft for the lawsuit Senator Ashcroft filed against the National 
Organization of Women (NOW) when he was Attorney General of Missouri. 
In response to Missouri's decision not to ratify the Equal Rights 
Amendment (``ERA''), NOW organized a boycott against Missouri (as well 
as other states that failed to ratify the ERA). Pursuant to that 
boycott, NOW urged organizations not to hold conventions in Missouri. 
In 1978, Missouri, through then-Attorney General Ashcroft, sued NOW in 
federal court, alleging that the boycott violated the antitrust laws. 
As Senator Ashcroft testified during his confirmation, he filed the 
lawsuit because the boycott was hurting the people of Missouri, and he 
believed it to be in violation of the antitrust laws. Senator Ashcroft 
testified that the lawsuit had nothing to do with the ERA or with 
political differences that Senator Ashcroft might have held with NOW. 
The decision to file it was purely a legal and economic one. The 
boycott hurt Missouri and, in his view, was illegal, and it was his 
duty to act on behalf of Missouri and its citizens.
  While some have charged this was settled law because a case cited in 
an opinion was more than a decade old, the fact that a case is cited in 
a decision is no indicator of whether the law of the particular case is 
settled. In fact, the legal question at issue--whether the Sherman Act 
covers boycotts engaged in with political rather than economic aims--
was acknowledged by all the judges on the 8th Circuit panel to be one 
of first impression. With all appellate judges acknowledging the 
novelty of the case, I do not know how the argument that the law was 
settled can be maintained. The language of the Sherman Act on its

[[Page 1262]]

face covered the conduct at issue, and it was well established that it 
generally covered boycotts. The court eventually ruled 2 judges to 1 
against General Ashcroft, but obviously it was an unanswered question 
in the law and could have gone either way. The law is clear now, but it 
wasn't then. An Attorney General for a state represents that state, and 
like any lawyer, is to zealously defend the rights of those he 
represents. So, naturally appeals were made. Not to make an appeal from 
an adverse ruling--especially in a case of first impression--would have 
departed from normal practice and may have violated his duty to his 
client, the people of Missouri. And the fact that the Supreme Court 
denied review means little in this case. The Supreme Court often denies 
review on cases of first impression to allow the lower courts to 
develop the law before it reviews and settles a question to get the 
benefit of broader thinking than a single court. It seems odd to 
criticize an Attorney General for trying to serve his client's 
interest, but I guess the point of John Ashcroft's critics is that 
results are what is important, and if your clients' opponent is a group 
favored by liberal politicians, serving their needs is more important 
than serving your constituents and clients, in this case, citizens of 
Missouri, no matter what your normal duty would be. That cannot be what 
we expect of either a state or our federal Attorney General.
  I would also like to respond to the number of comments that have been 
made about Senator Ashcroft's actions in Sermchief v. Gonzales, 660 
S.W.2d 683 (Mo. 1983). This case was a declaratory action brought by 
nurses working at family planning clinics to permit them to prescribe 
contraceptives and other reproductive health materials according to the 
same protocols dictated by physicians under the Nursing Practice Act of 
1975. The nurses also challenged the constitutionality of the statute. 
Attorney General Ashcroft's office was served with the lawsuit as 
required by law when any party challenges the constitutionality of a 
statute. Attorney General Ashcroft fulfilled his duty to defend the 
constitutionality of the statute. The brief his office filed did not 
address the proper scope of nursing practices as some have claimed.
  The Attorney General's Office also represented the State Board of 
Nursing, who was not a party to the case, and filed an amicus brief on 
behalf on their behalf urging an interpretation of the statute 
consistent with the position taken by the nurses. This is the view that 
prevailed in the Missouri Supreme Court. In other words, both of the 
Attorney General's briefs supported the constitutionality of the 
statute. It was proper for the Attorney General to file briefs on 
behalf of parties on either side of the litigation because the 
positions taken were not in conflict insofar as they supported 
constitutionality of statute. Even if they had been in conflict, the 
law recognizes that an Attorney General may take conflicting positions 
because he or she is the only lawyer the government has--even when 
different government entities cannot agree.
  The nurses were concerned about the Nursing Practice Act of 1975, and 
whether the term ``professional nursing'' expanded the scope of 
authorized nursing practices. The Board of Healing Arts threatened to 
order the nurses to show cause why the nurses should not be found 
guilty of the unauthorized practice of medicine, and physicians guilty 
of ``aiding and abetting.'' The Board of Healing won this argument at 
trial. The Missouri Supreme Court reversed the trial court and 
determined that the services complained of by the Board of Registration 
for the Healing Arts did indeed fall within the legislative standard of 
``professional nursing'' and there were permissible.
  The nurses in question were performing services including breast and 
pelvic examinations, laboratory testing of PAP smears, gonorrhea 
cultures, and blood serology and providing information about 
contraceptives. The trial court, in ruling in favor of the Board, 
found, among other things, that the findings derived from pelvic 
examinations which the nurses performed to attempt to diagnose the 
existence or nonexistence of contraindications to the use of 
contraceptives ``require an individual to draw upon education, judgment 
and skill based upon knowledge and application of principles in 
addition to and beyond biological, physical, social, and nursing 
sciences.'' Sermchief, 660 S.W.2d at 686.
  It was not unreasonable for the Board to argue that services that 
were generally performed by physicians and required the ``education, 
judgment and skill'' beyond ``nursing sciences.'' In fact, at trial, 
many prominent physicians testified as such. The Supreme Court, 
however, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, based upon the legislative 
standard that was set at the time. The court relied on the nurses' 
professional status to know what their limits were. The Board, in 
bringing the case originally, simply didn't feel comfortable relying on 
the knowledge of an individual nurse as to what his or her limits were.
  Any characterization of Senator Ashcroft's actions as Missouri 
Attorney General as an effort to deny health services to rural or low 
income patients, is at war with the facts. He was the Attorney General, 
and he had an obligation to defend the constitutionality of the 
statute. That is what he did, and it was perfectly appropriate.
  Finally, I would like to respond to some criticism leveled at Senator 
Ashcroft for his support of pro-life legislation while Governor of 
Missouri. Even ardent supporters of Roe v. Wade must admit that the 
decision is not the model of clarity. Moreover, it did not, contrary to 
what many special interest groups claim, authorize abortion on demand. 
The decision, while establishing a constitutional right to abortion, 
set up a scheme that, in the words of Justice White, left the Supreme 
Court to serve as the country's ``ex officio medical board with powers 
to approve or disapprove medical and operative practices and standards 
throughout the United States.'' Planned Parenthood of Central Mo. v. 
Danforth, 428 U.S. 52, 99 (1976). Thus, even after the Roe decision, 
there remained many unanswered questions about the contours of this new 
constitutional right. These questions included, for example, issues 
about parental consent for minors, minimal standards for abortion 
clinics, and whether public facilities or employees can be used to 
perform abortions. Many state legislatures--not just Missouri's--sought 
to answer these questions left unanswered by Roe.
  The statute passed by the Missouri legislature and signed by then-
Governor Ashcroft in 1986 was one of these attempts to define the 
parameters of the right to an abortion. Many abortions-rights 
extremists forget that the Supreme Court, in its abortion cases, has 
consistently held that states have an interest in protecting the health 
and safety of its citizens and in reducing the incidence of abortions. 
The 1986 Missouri statute sought to do just that, with 20 provisions 
covering various issues left unresolved by the Roe decision. The 
Supreme Court, in its Webster decision, agreed that many of these 
provisions did not infringe on a woman's constitutional right to an 
abortion. See Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, et al., 492 U.S. 
490, 522 (1989). Throughout this legislative and judicial process, the 
State of Missouri--not simply Governor John Ashcroft--followed 
established legal rules and procedures in their good faith effort to 
balance the right to an abortion with the state's interest in 
protecting the health and safety of its citizens. While it may have 
asserted its rights to appeal, the State of Missouri and then-Governor 
Ashcroft always respected the opinions and orders of the court and the 
rules governing litigation. The good faith use of the courts to decide 
legal issues is no basis on which to criticize Senator Ashcroft.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, is Senator Leahy going to speak?
  Mr. LEAHY. I yield to the distinguished majority leader.

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