Attorney General John Ashcroft today accused the country's biggest library association and other critics of fueling "baseless hysteria" about the government's ability to pry into the public's reading habits.
In an unusually pointed attack as part of his latest speech in defense of the Bush administration's counterterrorism initiatives, Mr. Ashcroft mocked and condemned the American Library Association and other Justice Department critics for believing that the F.B.I. wants to know "how far you have gotten on the latest Tom Clancy novel."
The association, which has argued for months that the government's new antiterrorism powers risk encroaching on the privacy of library users, took some satisfaction from the broadside.
"If he's coming after us so specifically, we must be having an impact," said Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the library association's Washington office.
The quotation above comes from the notoriously disreputable mudslingers at The New York Times, so it is obviously mere left wing propaganda.
I heard parts of Ashcroft's "address" on NPR tonight during my commute home. A couple of observations:
First, from now on I will interchangeably refer to our Attorney General as either "Ashcroft" or "Asshat", as he has clearly done an admirable job of earning the latter sobriquet.
Second, the mocking and condescending tone of his speech today demonstrates that either a) he is too stupid to understand the importance of the constitutional rights he wants to infringe; or b) he is certain that we are too stupid to understand their importance for ourselves. (He may be right about point "b" . . . .)
And third, the simplicity of his rhetoric (equating our legitimate and quite serious First Amendment concerns about the government's right [or need] to know what we read to "paranoia" about fictitious movie characters trying to find out "how far you have gotten on the latest Tom Clancy novel") belies both his utter lack of sophistication and the rather startling limits of his intellect. (Remember that Asshat was recently defeated in an election in his own state by a dead man. There tend to be reasons for such things . . . .)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Attorney General John Ashcroft is an extremely dangerous ideologue. He is also (currently) the top judicial officer in the executive branch of our federal government. You should be worried. At the very least, you should keep a sharp eye on what he is doing.