Published on Tuesday, February 14, 2006
John Ashcroft Spreads His Wings
by Bill Berkowitz
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One of the Christian Right's most stalwart allies within the administration, Ashcroft hasn't written a book; hasn't barnstormed around the nation singing his self-penned paean to the United States, "Let the Eagle Soar" -- captured in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11"; and he isn't going around throwing protective curtains over nude statues.
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The Ashcroft Group is also working with ChoicePoint, "a data broker that sells credit reports and other personal information to the FBI and other federal agencies". Another client, LTU Technologies Inc., is a Washington and Paris-based "maker of software for analysing large batches of video and other visual images".
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Attorneys general have tended to avoid the role of "a hired gun selling his connections", Charles Tiefer, a former deputy general counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives and author of "Veering Right, How the Bush Administration Subverts the Law for Conservative Causes", pointed out.
"The attorney general is very much supposed to embody the pure rule of law like the Department of Justice's statue of 'Blind Justice' and he's not expected afterwards to cloak with the mantle of his former office a bunch of greedy interests," said Tiefer, who teaches law at the University of Baltimore.
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0214-05.htm