What kind of Supreme Court will Ashcroft get?
Five. That’s the number Attorney General John Ashcroft must turn over in his mind. “Do I have five? Will Kennedy’s mild libertarianism or O’Connor’s fact-based decisionmaking scuttle it all?” Five. That’s the number Attorney General John Ashcroft must turn over in his mind. “Do I have five? Will Kennedy’s mild libertarianism or O’Connor’s fact-based decisionmaking scuttle it all?” Welcome to Ashcroft’s nightmare. He knows he needs the Supreme Court to continue arrogating power. With Congress continuing to bow and scrape, the court is the one body that can still stop him from conducting this “war” on terrorism as if it were his own private sandbox. Sure, lower courts are taking swipes at his tactics, but they’re not the big boys. A few setbacks and some angry words by appellate and district judges about how his insistence on secrecy is damaging our democratic traditions are about as troubling to Ashcroft as off-balance-sheet losses are to an Arthur Andersen accountant. His appeal machin
