-Caveat Lector- Fairness for Whom? http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/04/opinion/04HERB.h tml January 4, 2001 IN AMERICA 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 malicious 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, a 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. 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