-Caveat Lector-
Where are the questions for hypocrit )(*&)(*& Kennedy and (*)(*()(*
Klinton
and Jessejack and Rynoreno and Hellary and ...????????
GO ASHCROFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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On Wed, 31 Jan 2001 20:08:35 EST William Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
writes:
> http://tompaine.com/news/2001/01/30/index.html
>
>
> SEVENTEEN QUESTIONS FOR JOHN ASHCROFT
> Unasked and Possibly Excruciating Queries That Should Be Posed
> Morton Mintz
> is a former chairman of the Fund for Investigative Journalism. He
> was a
> Washington Post reporter for nearly thirty years before departing in
> 1988.
>
>
> Editor's Note: During the 2000 presidential campaign, Mr. Mintz
> produced a <A HREF="http://www.tompaine.com/news/2000/08/17/4.html">
> series</A> of articles for TomPaine.com outlining questions that
> reporters -- on
> behalf of the nation -- should be asking the candidates. In the same
> spirit,
> this article poses questions for John Ashcroft, George Bush's
> nominee for
> attorney general.
>
> Justice Department Policies and Priorities
>
> Q. To evade U.S. income taxes, Americans are transferring cash,
> securities
> and other assets to foreign tax havens in an amount equivalent to,
> by one
> unofficial but reliable estimate, the sum of "every tax dollar paid
> by
> everyone in New York State and New Jersey who earns less than
> $200,000 a
> year. " What will you do to halt this massive tax evasion?
>
> Q. In August 1993, the National Law Journal surveyed the counsels of
> major
> corporations, of which there are tens of thousands, and found that
> 66 percent
> of them believed that their companies had violated federal or state
> environmental laws during the previous year. There were very few
> prosecutions. Do you believe this suggests that there is sufficient
> enforcement of the environmental laws against corporate violators?
>
> Q. As Attorney General of Colorado, Gale Norton, chosen by President
> Bush to
> be Secretary of the Interior, favored letting corporate
> environmental
> violators police themselves. Do you favor self-policing for
> corporate
> environmental violators?
>
> Q. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the number of fatal work
> injuries each
> year between 1992 and 1999 at between 6,023 and 6,632 -- an average
> of 6,247
> annually. Over the decades, obviously, there have been hundreds of
> thousands
> of fatal on-the-job injuries. According to David Burnham, an expert
> monitor
> of Justice Department data, perhaps five to ten percent were "a
> result of a
> knowing violation of the law." Yet by the early 1990s, "one
> businessman had
> gone to prison for violations of federal occupational safety and
> health law."
> What will you do about this situation?
>
> Corporate Crime v. Street Crime
>
> Q. Are there two standards of criminal justice? Is there one
> standard for men
> and women -- mostly poor and minorities -- who knowingly and
> willfully commit
> crimes, often trivial ones like possession of tiny amounts of
> illegal drugs?
> Is there another standard for corporate executives who knowingly and
> willfully: market defective products that injure or sicken hundreds
> or
> thousands of innocent people; pollute in grave violation of
> environmental
> protection laws; seriously endanger workers in violation of
> occupational
> safety and health laws, or lie to the Food and Drug Administration
> about
> prescription drugs that cause injuries or deaths or were
> inadequately or
> fraudulently tested?
>
> Q. Do you favor the death penalty for corporate executives who
> knowingly and
> willfully market lethally defective products, such as tires, SUVs,
> and IUDs?
>
> Q. Can you name any corporate executives who have been indicted,
> prosecuted,
> convicted and/or incarcerated for having knowingly and willfully
> marketed a
> gravely or lethally defective product, gravely violated
> environmental or
> occupational safety and health laws, or lied to the FDA?
>
> Death Penalty
>
> Q. Would you yourself be willing to administer a lethal injection or
> other
> form of capital punishment to a person on death row?
>
> Q. As governor of Texas, was George W. Bush "a man of no mercy"? In
> 1983,
> Karla Faye Tucker, a drug-addicted prostitute, and her boyfriend
> brutally
> murdered two people. On death row in Texas, she became a born-again
> Christian, began a prison ministry that reached out to prisoners in
> other
> states and countries as well as a great many in Texas, and admitted
> and
> expressed remorse for her crime.
>
> Tucker's lawyers asked the Board of Pardons and Parole -- all of
> whose
> members were appointed by Governor Bush -- to commute her death
> sentence to
> life in prison without parole, but the Board never met with her or
> her
> attorneys, never met to consider the plea, and turned it down in
> private, and
> without explanation.
>
> In 1998, your close friend and backer, the Reverend Pat Robertson,
> pleaded
> with Governor Bush to spare Karla Faye Tucker, saying that were he
> to refuse
> to do so he would be "a man of no mercy." She was promptly executed.
>
> Do you agree or disagree with Robertson's characterization of
> Governor Bush?
>
> Q. During the election campaign, both Governor George W. Bush and Al
> Gore
> justified the death penalty with the undocumented assertion that it
> deters
> others from committing capital crimes. Numerous careful studies have
> found
> that capital punishment does not deter as claimed. What evidence do
> you have
> to challenge these studies?
>
> Q. Most leaders of religious organizations -- Christian and Jewish
> --
> maintain that the death penalty is an inappropriate punishment in
> today's
> America. What is your response?
>
> Justice Department Secrecy
>
> Q. The Justice Department itself is violating the law by denying
> news
> organizations, public interest groups and the general public access
> to
> comprehensive information about how the Clinton Administration
> enforced the
> nation's laws in 1999. Will you pledge to reverse this policy so it
> will not
> happen again while you are Attorney General?
>
> Criminal Justice Under Governor George W. Bush
>
> Q. Texas spends only $4.65, on average, to defend a poor person
> charged with
> a crime or crimes, and it has no organized system of public
> defenders. In a
> recent report, the nonprofit <A
> HREF="http://www.appleseeds.net/default.cfm">Texas Appleseed
> Foundation</A> said these facts help
> to explain why the Texas prison population of 162,000 exceeds that
> of the
> more populous California, and why Texas leads the country in
> executions (152
> under Governor Bush). Would you say that Texas offers indigents and
> rich folk
> equal justice under law?
>
> Q. A study released last year by a Columbia University law professor
> examined
> all death penalty convictions that were overturned between 1973 and
> 1995.
> Nearly 40 percent of were reversed because of ineffective assistance
> of
> counsel. Citing this finding, Attorney General Janet Reno said, "Our
> system
> will work only if we provide every defendant with competent
> counsel." Do you
> agree or disagree?
>
> Campaign Finance
>
> Q. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines
> a bribe
> as: "Something, such as money or a favor, offered to or given to a
> person in
> a position of trust to influence that person's views or conduct." Do
> the
> campaign-finance laws legalize bribes? Or do you contend that big
> campaign
> contributors -- including those to President Clinton and the
> Democratic
> National Committee -- were not seeking to influence the views or
> conduct of
> persons in positions of trust? And do you agree or disagree with Bob
> Dole's
> statement, in 1983, that "[w]hen these political action committees
> give
> money, they expect something in return other than good government"?
>
> Pat Robertson
>
> Q. You and the Reverend Pat Robertson have been very close, as
> evidenced by
> his leadership of the campaign to win Senate approval of your
> nomination to
> be Attorney General; his earlier efforts to elect you President of
> the United
> States; the Christian Coalition's designation of you as a Coalition
> "100
> percenter," and your inclusion in the "Inner Circle Sponsors" of a
> Washington
> celebration of Robertson's seventieth birthday. Consequently, it's
> essential
> to inquire whether you share such publicly expressed views of
> Robertson's as
> the following:
> "There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the
> Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take
> it
> anymore." (Address to the American Center for Law and Justice,
> November 1993;
> in this as in numerous similar pronouncements, Robertson was
> blithely
> contradicted by his top employee, Ralph Reed. While executive
> director of the
> Christian Coalition in 1994 and 1995, Reed was telling audiences at
> the
> National Press Club and various Jewish groups that separation of
> Church and
> state must be "complete" and "inviolable.")
>
>
> "I am bound by the laws of the United States and all fifty states.
> ... I am
> not bound by any case or any court to which I myself am not a party.
> ... I
> don't think the Congress of the United States is subservient to the
> courts.
> ... They can ignore a Supreme Court ruling if they so choose."
> (Washington
> Post, June 27, 1986.)
>
>
> "When I said during my presidential bid [in 1988] that I would only
> bring
> Christians and Jews into the government, I hit a fire storm. 'What
> do you
> mean?' the media challenged me. 'You're not going to bring atheists
> into the
> government? How dare you maintain that those who believe in the
> Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than
> Hindus and
> Muslims?' My simple answer is, 'Yes, they are.'" (The New World
> Order, 1991,
> page 218.)
>
>
> "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the
> Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other
> thing.
> Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I
> can love
> the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to
> them."
> ("The 700 Club," January 14, 1991.)
>
>
> "The public education movement has also been an anti-Christian
> movement. ...
> We can change education in America if you put Christian principles
> in and
> Christian pedagogy in. In three years, you would totally
> revolutionize
> education in America." ("The 700 Club," September 27, 1993.)
>
>
> "There may be more homosexuals and pedophiles in your
> [congressional]
> district than there are Roman Catholics and Baptists." (Message to
> Congress
> published as a full-page ad in the Washington Post, June 20, 1990.)
>
>
> "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is
> about a
> socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to
> leave
> their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy
> capitalism,
> and become lesbians." (Fund-raising letter, 1992.)
>
>
> "It is interesting, that termites don't build things, and the great
> builders
> of our nation almost to a man have been Christians, because
> Christians have
> the desire to build something. He [sic] is motivated by love of man
> and God,
> so he builds. The people who have come into [our] institutions
> [today] are
> primarily termites. They are into destroying institutions that have
> been
> built by Christians, whether it is universities, governments, our
> own
> traditions, that we have. ... The termites are in charge now, and
> that is not
> the way it ought to be, and the time has arrived for a godly
> fumigation." (
> New York Magazine, August 18,1986.)
>
>
> "If anybody understood what Hindus really believe, there would be no
> doubt
> that they have no business administering government policies in a
> country
> that favors freedom and equality....Can you imagine having the
> Ayatollah
> Ruhollah Khomeini as defense minister, or Mahatma Gandhi as minister
> of
> health, education, and welfare? The Hindu and Buddhist idea of karma
> and the
> Muslim idea of kismet, or fate, condemn the poor and the disabled to
> their
> suffering. ...It's the will of Allah. These beliefs are nothing but
> abject
> fatalism, and they would devastate the social gains this nation has
> made if
> they were ever put into practice." (The New World Order, page 219.)
>
>
> Planned Parenthood "is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people
> to have
> adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism --
> everything
> that the Bible condemns." ("The 700 Club," April 9, 1991.)
>
>
> "Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is
> now doing
> to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same
> thing. It is
> happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the
> liberal-based
> media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians.
> Wholesale abuse
> and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group
> in America
> today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in
> history."
> (1993 interview with Molly Ivins.)
>
>
> "I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get
> married, you
> have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the
> head of the
> household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the
> way it is,
> period." ("The 700 Club," January 8, 1992.)More such statements by
> Pat
> Robertson might be painful for gentlemen as well as ladies to hear,
> so let's
> turn to the final subject:
>
> Corporation = Person, Fetus = Nonperson
>
> In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decided, in part, in 1973, that
> during the
> first trimester of pregnancy a fetus is not a "person" within the
> meaning of
> the Fourteenth Amendment -- that is, the fetus is not a human being
> yet
> capable either of being denied "the equal protection of the laws" or
> of being
> deprived of "life, liberty, or property without the due process of
> law." In
> Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the High Court
> decided, in
> 1868, that the corporation, a paper entity with neither conscience
> nor soul,
> is a person under that same amendment. In light of the following
> background,
> can you reconcile the two decisions and answer the question at the
> end.
>
> The Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade after reviewing numerous
> lengthy
> briefs, hearing oral argument, and deliberating extensively. In a
> statement
> with which I believe you agree, former U.S. Circuit Judge and former
> Yale Law
> Professor Robert H. Bork famously denounced the ruling as "a wholly
> unjustifiable usurpation of state legislative authority."
>
> In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the issue before
> the High
> Court was whether the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal
> protection of
> the laws to every person prevented taxation (by Santa Clara County
> in
> California) of property owned by a corporation (Southern Pacific
> Railroad) at
> a higher rate than if owned by a human being.
>
> The legislative history of the Amendment, which Congress proposed in
> 1866,
> does not contain a word suggesting that the "person" to be protected
> could be
> a corporation. Indeed, Justice Hugo L. Black, in 1938, would write:
> "The
> history of the Amendment proves that the people were told that its
> purpose
> was to protect weak and helpless human beings," these being the
> newly freed
> slaves.
>
> Yet only eighteen years after the Amendment had been ratified, in
> 1868, the
> Supreme Court declared the corporation to be a person. There was no
> oral
> argument, no deliberation. Instead, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite
> simply
> made this announcement: "The Court does not wish to hear argument on
> the
> question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the
> Constitution, which forbids a state to deny any person the equal
> protection
> of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the
> opinion that it
> does."
>
> Q. If Roe v. Wade was "a wholly unjustifiable usurpation of state
> legislative
> authority," what was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific
> Railroad?
>
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