Anger over Ashcroft

As I watched the Ashcroft hearings this week, one predominant thought filled my head: where the hell does Ted Kennedy get off questioning anyone's morality? Why not just dig Hitler up and have him give a speech about the wrongs of genocide while you're at it?

This has been only one of the many parts of the circus act that has been the Ashcroft hearing. I tell you, the Democrats are acting like a bunch of ninnies. Now, I'm an independent. Neither party thrills me in the least, but at least at the moment the Republicans aren't acting like a bunch of whiney children so I'm going to talk about the Democrats here. I was expecting the hearing to resort to having Ted Kennedy asking, "Now Mr. Ashcroft, is it true that you are secretly plotting to overthrow the government with your own private army?"

Has anyone actually read the whole speech that our old pal Kennedy is quoting in Congress? It comes from a James Madison speech. Ashcroft was quoting none other then the framer of our Bill of Rights. Suddenly, however, when the Democrats need some cannon fodder against someone they'll take some quote totally out of context and stick it in there as "evidence" that this person doesn't deserve the job they're up for.

Kennedy then goes on to say Ashcroft shouldn't hold this position because he doesn't hold the same views as the American people. Well, who do you think put the Republicans in office? King George II? They were elected. That does mean, unfortunate as it may be to you Ted, that there are a lot of people out there who support the views of republicans. Not to mention the fact that it doesn't really matter what views Ashcroft has. It only matters that he enforces the rules of the government and that he conducts himself lawfully. That is what the trial should be about, not about whether or not Mr. Ashcroft's views coincide issue by issue with the views of the radical left. I'm pretty sure not a single person in our government point-by-point agrees with every law in the book. After all, if that were the case, we could eliminate the entire legislative branch of government, as we would never need to create, modify, or remove laws!

Then we get into the whole double standard that's being employed in this witch-hunt. A few months ago, Joseph Liberman was getting praised for his faith. Now, all of a sudden, being heavily religious is wrong because Mr. Ashcroft is a white, conservative, Christian. The Democrats also suspect that Mr. Ashcroft was a draft dodger and have made such allegations in public. Yet, our old friend Clinton was known to be a draft dodger and we were all told, "oh that was just the popular thing at the time to do! Nothing wrong with that." Not to mention the fact, that if it wasn't wrong for the person in charge of our entire military, then why is it wrong for something like the Attorney General?

I think my favorite part of this whole trial has been the race card bologna. "Mr. Ashcroft, is it true that you are secretly the head of the KKK?" That's a question I thought was going to come up, though it should be noted that the only KKK associate in these hearings was the senior senator of the Democratic party, Robert Byrd, who's an ex-member. Ashcroft goes against one out of twenty-seven African Americans he's reviewed for a position in his career, and suddenly he's a racist? Is that all it takes these days to be a racist? How many politicians are racists then? Certainly most of the Democratic party would qualify, especially considering they just recently turned down an African American, Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, who was endorsed by none other then Bill Bradley, for the position of the head of the Democratic National Committee.

To top this all off, it appears Tom Daschle doesn't even have control of his party anymore. Kennedy's preparing to file a filibuster against Ashcroft is proof of that, after Daschle promised, both publicly and privately, that this would not happen. That says a lot for the "respect" and "control" that Daschle must have in his party.

"Mr. Ashcroft, is it true that you are Satan?" "Mr. Ashcroft, is it true that you want to eat our children?" They're not far away from that type of questioning. That's what really makes this just that much more humorous. Is this what the Democratic Party has become? I personally prefer it when both parties can conduct themselves like adults so maybe some actual issues can be tackled with some level of maturity. Right now, the Democrats are running around like a bunch of whiney children, however, and it certainly isn't going to help them any.

The Democrats, going by historical precedents, should've had no trouble winning this election. Al Gore lost an election (and the first person that brings up Florida or the popular vote gets whacked upside the head with a Batman and Robin DVD) that he never should've. They had everything going for them: the press was in their back pocket, a great state of the country over the last few years, a popular outgoing President, and a number of other factors. Yet they still lost. Heck, Gore lost his home state and his hometown! If the Democrats want to take back the power they lost in this election, they better pull their act together and stop acting like children because they're the ones who have to be on the offensive now, and this behavior certainly isn't helping.