About
	Contact Us
	Articles
	Topic Index
	Reports
	Quotes
	On the Web
	Links
	TW Tracker
	Support

John Ashcroft

• November 10 -- Ashcroft’s “Excesses” vs. Arafat’s “Aura”
One sign the New York Times is a liberal newspaper is when Attorney General John Ashcroft gets rougher press than a terrorist. On the Times front page, Ashcroft is assailed by critics for sacrificing civil liberties, while the dying Palestinian leader Arafat was a cult hero, touted as a “guerrilla fighter and Nobel Prize winner.”

• June 30 -- Who's the Most Polarizing Republican of All?
David Johnson and Richard Stevenson file a story on "polarizing" Attorney General John Ashcroft, days after Stevenson relayed criticisms that Dick Cheney was "among the most polarizing figures in politics."

• June 28 -- Criticizing Michael Moore: As Phony as John Ashcroft
Arts editor and columnist Frank Rich criticizes Michael Moore, but only to compare him to John Ashcroft.

• May 27 -- Bush's Response to Terror Threats: Either Passive Or Politicized
First the Times jumps on Bush for not acting on vague terrorist threats in a daily briefing he received a month before 9-11. Yet when John Ashcroft speaks out about a new Al Qaeda threat, they question the political timing in the headline and story.

• April 19 -- John Ashcroft, Loser
Adam Nagourney and Eric Lichtblau fill in their scorecard for the 9/11 Commission, and put Attorney General John Ashcroft firmly in the loser category: "By the time he was finished, even some Republicans were saying he might have been better off staying at home, and some commission members suggested he may have damaged his relations with them."

• April 14 -- The Anonymous Ashcroft Memo
An editorial on the FBI's pre-9/11 failures dismisses a memo introduced by John Ashcroft and fails to mention the most interesting part of the story--the memo's author.

• March 9 -- Changing The Subject: From Partial-Birth To An Assault On Privacy
In "Administration Sets Forth A Limited View on Privacy," Robert Pear and Eric Lichtblau change the subject from fighting partial-birth abortion to a Bush assault on medical privacy.

• February 24 -- "Abhorrent Steps" by the Bushies
Foreign editor Ethan Bronner reviews eight anti-Bush books attacking the administration on civil liberties. Bronner has some issues with the books but also says: "Many of the steps taken by the administration are wrong, even abhorrent."

• January 26 -- Harsh Ashcroft
Has John Ashcroft used "harsh measures" to combat terrorism? Alan Cowell takes it as a given.

• September 26 -- Ashcroft, Bush, and the Beatniks
Dean Murphy visits San Francisco’s famous beatnik bookstore, City Lights, and invests the aging pre-hippie bohemians with dissident allure: “Yet in the era of George W. Bush and John Ashcroft, the dissident Beat voices are enjoying a renaissance of sorts….”

• July 15 -- “Unpopular” Ashcroft? Only At The Times
Adam Nagourney’s profile of Democratic presidential candidates claims Attorney General John Ashcroft is an “unpopular” and polarizing figure nationwide. But while many Democrats don’t care for John Ashcroft, a poll shows the public at large does.

• June 10 -- “Ashcroft = McCarthy,” Take 17
Bruce Weber’s review of a play about a family of 1950’s Communists in Brooklyn throws John Ashcroft into the mix: “Stalin may inevitably conjure up thoughts of Saddam Hussein, and McCarthyites might spur comparisons to the Ashcroft Justice Department…”

• June 9 -- The Times’ Pursuit of John Ashcroft
A Week in Review story by Adam Liptak, “The Pursuit of Immigrants in America After Sept. 11,” likens the roundup of illegal immigrants after 9-11 to the Palmer Raids and the Nisei internment.

• May 1 -- Liberal Lieberman’s Non-Threatening Religion
In one sense, the Times story on Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman is heartening, a sympathetic look at the trials faced by a devoutly religious politician. But is the liberal Lieberman getting breaks because of the Times new respect for religion, or because he’s a less inviting target than conservatives John Ashcroft and Rick Santorum?

• March 12 -- Toying With Anti-Ashcroft Paranoia
Charles McGrath wrote about the annual Toy Fair for the Times Sunday magazine, where he found wireless teddy bears, dolls that make rude armpit sounds-and latent McCarthyism: "Had it been available, the [spy] stuff would have sold like crazy during the McCarthy era....A country where parents and children want to play at investigating one another is a country that was bound, sooner or later, to wind up with a John Ashcroft."

• February 26 -- NYT: "McCarthy Years...Similar to the Present"
A New York Times "Week in Review" piece asserted that "the McCarthy years in some ways were eerily similar to the present moment" and, after quoting John Ashcroft calling terrorists "evil," claimed: "It is not hard to see in Mr. Ashcroft's language traces of what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously described as ‘the paranoid style in American politics.’" On FNC, Morton Kondracke suggested: "This piece belongs in The Nation...or some other...America-hating publication."

• December 18 -- Bin Laden = Ashcroft
New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis thinks "certainty is the enemy of decency and humanity in people who are sure they are right, like Osama bin Laden and John Ashcroft." Lewis also made clear he doesn’t let reality get in the way of his utopian vision for a socialist Britain: "The health service doesn't work. I'm still for it. But it doesn't work."