by Wayne Lutz, January 16th, 2001
The Left is coming for the Bad Boy, John Ashcroft. They are foaming at the prospect of bringing this man down - this evil man who dares present himself as a man of honor, decency and integrity. Those claims cause the Left to sweat blood in their rage, because they cannot believe that honor, decency and integrity exist. To a leftist, honor, decency and integrity are tools to be used to personal advantage and to cover up true intentions. It is beyond their ability to comprehend that a man might actually hold those concepts dear.
The greatest expressed fear from the Left is that Ashcroft will use his position to impose his <shudder> conservative views instead of applying existing law. That a man might be capable of sufficient integrity to separate his personal opinions from his legal obligations is unbelievable in this age of Clintonian legal relativism.
This fear is doubly absurd for its glaring hypocrisy. Ellen Goodman is a columnist for the Boston Globe and the Washington Post, a woman who leans just to the left of, say, Maxine Waters. In her anti-Ashcroft rant of January 16th, Goodman sniffed, "The attorney general, of all Cabinet members, should be someone who puts law above ideology".
Well, congratulations on that flash of insight. It's just a shame that it took you eight years to see it. Eight years, Ms. Goodman.
For eight years the Justice Department has been a center of organized criminal resistance to the application of the rule of law. For eight years the Justice Department has been used as nothing more than a protection racket for the corrupt executive branch.
Where was the cry of "law above ideology" when Janet Reno justified the murder of innocent women and children in order to save them from abuse at Waco?
Where was your passion for "law above ideology" when Janet Reno delayed the appointment of an independent counsel in the Whitewater scandal?
Of what value was "law above ideology" when Reno impeded the investigation of the Paula Jones litigation by having Justice Department lawyers defend Clinton's plea of immunity - a plea that was unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court?
Where were the champions of "law above ideology" when the Justice Department turned a blind eye to the outrageous violations of campaign finance laws?
In what way did "law above ideology" protect the right of Elian Gonzales's family to be secure in their home?
The list could fill volumes. The current Justice Department under Janet Reno has apparently sworn as its solemn duty to uphold and defend the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States, "law above ideology" be damned.
The fear of John Ashcroft among the leftists is palpable, and it is real. They fear that Ashcroft will somehow succeed in imposing his conservative values when he should be upholding existing law. That fear is grounded in the liberal inability to understand that men of honor work to change unjust laws, whereas the liberal methodology is to subvert, make end-runs around or simply ignore those laws that are inconvenient to them. This fear of theirs is, of course, unfounded.
But many among them have another fear. They fear that a Justice Department with integrity is dangerous to them because it will be in a position to hold them accountable for the abuses and criminal activity of the past eight years. This is, undoubtedly, the reason that the current administration is even now frantically wiping clean the hard drives of all of the computers in the White House - the heretofore unheard of equivalent of burning all records, as reported by Judicial Watch, Inc.
That fear is fully justified.
Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?