In Part Two, our review of John Ashcroft's conduct as Missouri Governor and Attorney General further supports and underscores the conclusion we reached in Part One: John Ashcroft should not be confirmed to the office of U.S. Attorney General. His record in Missouri is deeply disturbing. It shows 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 women, minorities and the poor. It shows scorn for any viewpoint he disagrees with, a preference for confrontation over compromise, and, most troubling of all, a dedication not to upholding the law and the Constitution but to bending them to conform to an extremist ideology.
The many troubling aspects of John Ashcroft's record in Missouri include: