Civil rights group again attacks Ashcroft nomination

Ashcroft

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Citing what it calls John Ashcroft's "deeply disturbing" record as Missouri's governor and attorney general, People for the American Way on Saturday repeated its demand that he be turned down as the nominee for U.S. attorney general.

The public record "shows clearly that John Ashcroft does not meet the high standards of fairness and integrity required of the Attorney General," said Ralph Neas, president of the civil rights group.

In a second round of documenting its case against Ashcroft, People for the American Way covered his eight years as governor of Missouri and eight years as the state's attorney general.

"He has not demonstrated a sufficient commitment to equal justice under the law to be entrusted with upholding the Constitution and our civil rights laws," Neas said.

He called on members of the Senate to hear the "compelling case against John Ashcroft" before making a judgment on his nomination. "He will be defeated," Neas declared.

People for the American Way, which describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of civil rights and civil liberties, issued a similar documentation of Ashcroft's Senate record last week and has joined a coalition of groups that aims to defeat his nomination.

In a statement, Neas said, "The record shows John Ashcroft as a relentless crusader for extreme causes who used the powers of his public positions to seek to drastically cut back or eliminate reproductive rights.

"It shows a man who more, than a quarter of a century after Brown v. Board of Education, used the resources of his office in a divisive, single-minded fight to obstruct even voluntary desegregation of the St. Louis schools. It shows a troubling insensitivity to the rights and needs of minorities and the poor. It shows an intemperance that scorns any viewpoints he disagrees with, seeks confrontation over compromise, and, most troubling of all, appears dedicated not to upholding the law and the Constitution, but to bending them to conform to an extremist ideology."

Neas urged every senator to review the record his group has researched, saying it shows in great detail a "sorry record" of "an elected official using every possible tactic, including failure to comply with federal court orders, to thwart desegregation."

Noting that Ashcroft ran for chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1993 and lost to an anti-choice and conservative candidate, Haley Barbour, Neas added "if John Ashcroft is too extreme to be chair of the RNC, surely he is too extreme to be Attorney General of the United States."