Reno was certainly atrocious (in the literal sense of "performing atrocities"), but for true barrel-scraping AG's I'm gonna go with Ed Meese. Much like Ashcroft, but without the style and decorum...

--Dave

Bobby Kennedy pulled stunts as AG that should have landed him under the jail (to name just one, as Jonah notes in The Corner today, he bugged MLK, Jr., among others).

But really, is anybody listening to Krugman any more? His column amounts to nothing more than a collection of the petty bigotries of the faculty lounge. I doubt anybody other than his amen chorus (and the Krugman Truth Squad) are paying any attention to him these days.

John Mitchell.

consider

http://www.musicforamerica.org/node/view/23215
[A GREAT John Ashcroft press conference video]

Get some new thoughts or some humor into those jaded wingnut moralisms...pretty please

Please read the new Atlantic Monthly on the detention of U.S. nationals and the JD's internal discussions. They seem to be the only publication willing to give the AG a fair shake. He's a prig alright, but he's not who you think he is.

I was in Somalia at the time of Waco, the running joke at the time was the only difference between Waco and Somalia was that they had armor at Waco.

Anyone remember Ramsey Clark?

I think at the very worst, Ashcroft would be about the 21st worst AG. At best he's in the top 10.

ah yes Richard, Ramsey Clark - the modern day Dems have tried to put him out of their collective memories as he's such an embarrassment these days running around with the ANSWER loonies.

And whilst AG, he was a valuable member of that Johnson administration - another person Dems don't mention much anymore....

Re: Richard R

Other than the fact that Janet Reno is the AG for 15 days in this century, John Ashcroft is definately the worst AG of the century. (He's also the only other AG :)

Another vote for Ramsey Clark as being the worst. Not necessarily least effective, or most dense; he was surely neither. But he was , to steal some from Mr. Orwell, objectively a traitor. His political crusades since leaving office, bizarre and quixotic though they may be, are nothing short of Marxist in tone and substance. He is the direct forbear of the Michael Moore stylr of leftist "protest": no allegation is too outlandish or unsubstantiated to make if it paints America as evil and greedy, and gives aid and comfort to her enemies.

I remember people hating Ed Meese in the 80's, but I can't remember why, or anything he did that actually hurt innocent people in the way that Reno did. She was in over her head, though...She was the third (known) choice after Clinton decided that most important qualification for the job was a vagina.

I remember reading that Johnson put Clark in the AG job just to conflict Clark's father (Supreme Court Justice) out of cases that the administration was a party to. That would have been the most cynical appointment ever to that job.

I don't even buy the prig and political dunce accusations. What, specifically, has he done to earn those appellations? It wouldn't have mattered what Ashcroft did or said as AG, he would have been vilified. It started long before he was nominated. So a guy decides he'd rather not have bare breasts behind him as a press conference backdrop. That makes him a prig? He knew the media would make a point of taking low shots with the bare boobs behind his head, and he was right. Your accusations sound like talk-show generalities.

Any AG who continues to devote resources harassing pot smokers and porn businesses when those resources could have gone towards better domestic protections against threats deserves the label of "dunce" and then some.

I didn't realize that Ramsey Clark's father was a Supreme Court Justice. Perhaps R. Clark's left-wing idiocy is some form of penance for the fact that his father coordinated the placement of Japanese-Americans in internment camps during WWII. Perhaps he also inherited his father's IQ. Here is dad's bio from http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/legal_entity/86/biography:

Tom C. Clark was born, raised, and educated in Texas. The son of a prominent politician, Clark was active in Texas Democratic politics. He joined the Justice Department in 1937 and served as civilian coordinator of the forced evacuation of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast during World War II. President Harry S Truman appointed Clark attorney general in 1945, and nominated him to the High Court in 1949. Truman later lamented his choice. "It's not that he's a bad man," rued Truman. "It's just that he's the dumbest sonofabitch I ever met." Clark resigned in 1967 to avoid any question of conflict of interest after President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Clark's son, Ramsey, to serve as Attorney General.

Reno was way better than Ashcroft. How about Edwin Meese? Now, there, you might have an argument. Although, we'll still say Ashcroft is worse.

Don't forget mandatory minimums and the federal sentencing guidelines came in under Reagan and he packed the federal courts with conservatives.

Wasn't Jamie Gorelick deputy AG under Janet Reno? She's the one who implemented this now-famous wall which prevented the intelligence agencies from sharing information with each other ... not even counting Waco, Ruby Ridge, Wen Ho Lee and the Elian fiascoes, this 'wall,' which certainly was one of the enablers of September 11th, places Reno's Justice Department in one of the most disastrous ever ...

In my opinion, anyway

Ni

Yeah, Reno was way better than Ashcroft if your standard is "How many Americans did the AG order killed?" She was awfully good at killing men, women and children for no good reason, and awfully good at sending little boys back to Communist hellholes at gunpoint, and awfully bad at doing anything about terrorism or maintaining any semblance of government ethics.

Ramsey Clark- traitor
Janet Reno- incompetent

To be perfectly fair, I think we all must admit that John Ashcroft is the worse Attorney General since Janet Reno.

Period.

Janet Reno is by far the worst. Didn't she stonewall numerous investigations into Clinton's abuses? The Buddhist temple for one. How many people skipped the country before she could get them? Not to mention the reasons cited above; Waco and Elian Gonzalez.

Charles Hueter: Sources, please. I remember the much ballyhooed "the DoJ's got professional porn surfers and they're gonna go all postal on the industry" stories a couple of months ago, but what has come of it? As to "harassing pot smokers", like it or not it is still illegal and unless Congress changes the laws it is his duty to pursue and prosecute as able.

I'd be the first to agree that the DoJ and AG's office has too damn much involvement in America's daily life, but unless the laws are changed it is not his prerogative to choose which he tries to enforce. Yes, a prioritization is needed and looks like it exists, but simply because he has increased duties resulting from the war doesn't mean that all other domestic law enforcement halts. What do you think the response would be if he diverted resources to the GWOT from protecting abortionists from harrassment?

Ramsey Clark and Janet Reno fill the top five places by themselves. They were so bad that the next place is 6th. Ashcroft comes in at about 10th. The actual order is Worst, Clark; Second worst Clark; Third worst Reno; Fourth Clark: Fifth Reno.

Warren G Harding's AG, Harry Daugherty, who worked closely with Albert Fall on the Teapot Dome Project (Scandal) and enriched himself through bootlegging, should receive some votes for the worst AG.

Well, Narniaman, under that reasoning John Ashcroft is unarguably the BEST AG since Janet Reno. :-)

...takes a child away from his grandparents at riflepoint, in order to ship him back for brainwashing in a communist dictatorship.

I think you misspelled rescuing a child who had been kidnapped by his grandparents and returned him to his father.

Yeah, Mark S. Those grandparents WENT to Cuba, PUT Elian and his mom on that raft and PUSHED it all the way to Miami.

If life in Cuba is so cool that you would wish it on Elian, why ain't you there?

Re Ashcroft: My personal memory of Ashcroft is when Shumer (D-Ignorance) wanted to send the FBI on fishing trips into the NICS database "looking for terrorists who might have bought guns" (really!), Ashcroft told him point-blank to F.O. because that was specifically banned by law. I think that willingness to live up to his oath of office, even when it makes him unpopular, is worth a few screened statues. It also puts him in a league light-years removed from his immediate predecessor.

I hope that if anyone ever takes my children, the full force of the police (local, federal, whatever) will be used to help me get them back, even if the kidnappers are my own parents.

While Waco was a fiasco, I'm not sure how much better it could have gone given that Koresh was happy to kill everyone in the compound and commit suicide and had fanatical followers who agreed with him.

I don't particularly like Reno, but I'm not going to simplify history because of it.

Bolie IV

If you hated having people live in isolated conclaves with guns not messing with anyone Reno was your man... or woman... Reno was also very good at keeping the AG office from being at all effective at anything else.

If you hate people that smoke pot or look at naughty pictures on the internet then Ashcroft may get around to that sometime... I haven't had any fewer popups with naked women appear than before. My friends that all used to smoke pot before still do...

Anyone that says Ashcroft is worse then Reno is being purposely biased or ignorant. That doesn't even bring Clark, a known traitor to this country, into account. Krugman is a clown, always has been, and wont have to stop from his tenured position in the ivory tower. What has to stop is people taking him seriously.

You wrote a "Demoral-laced Norm Mineta"

I assume you meant a "Demerol-laced Norm Mineta"

Go submandave!

Current Federal enforcement of marijuana laws seem to emphasise prosecution of people supplying it to those who feel it helps them cope with genuine medical conditions. If they are in fact investigating criminal organisations who distribute the herb because its illegality makes it profitable to do so, they certainly aren't publcising it.

My vote is Reno. Others have pointed at Ruby Ridge, Waco, Elian Gonzolas, etc. Probably the worst thing though was 9-11. Sure Jamie Gorelick wrote the policy, etc. that built the wall that to a great extent caused the intelligence failure leading to 9-11, but Reno approved it, putting it into effect. Of everything that we have seen so far that might possibly have prevented 9-11, this was the absolutely most likely.

Add to that that she made her name prosecuting child abuse cases based on coaching impressionable small child witnesses, putting obviously innocents in jail. And then at Waco, she approved the final assault based on false information about child abuse - they knew what buttons to push, and pushed them.

The two big things I hear about Ashcroft are that he prays at the office and about the PATRIOT Act. As to the first, so what? It is obvious that his morality gives him much more strength to do the right thing than did his predecessor (can you say Buddist Temple?). And invariably, those who complain about the PATRIOT Act haven't read it, or they would realize that those things most worrisome to "civil libertarians" must be reported to Congress on a routine basis, and, for example, as of the last report, there have been exactly zero uses so far of the ability to search library records.

In addition, Bruce, any local law enforcement official can subpoena all the library records he or she wants and always could. So how come the Patriot Act is a problem? Furthermore, didn't Congress pass it? How can Ashcroft get the blame? Reno is clearly the worst ever for her actions in office. I don't remember Clark doing anything other than general Democratic nutsiness while in office.

minor quibble: an MP-5 is not a rifle. Aside from that, right on.

I see this all the time - I'm not defending Clinton/Reno, but RUBY RIDGE HAPPENED ON GHW BUSH'S WATCH, PEOPLE! August, 1992. Before Clinton was even elected.

Never been a fan of Ashcroft but once I reflect on past AG's, he may actually be in the running as one of the better AG's.

I don't buy the "political dunce" appellation. Steve is from the show me state, so he's obviously aware that Ashcroft served as state auditor, two terms as state AG, two terms as Governor (8 straight balanced budgets) and a term in the senate. And the reason he didn't win a second term is that he stopped campaigning when his opponent, Mel Carnahan, was killed in a plane crash three weeks before the election. Not quite the resume one would expect of a "dunce."

"So a guy decides he'd rather not have bare breasts behind him as a press conference backdrop. "

This is actually a myth. Please stop repeating it.

Re the "incompetent Reno" remarks. I think that fairly well nails it. But she was also fairly partiisan (I've worked for 7 of them). But her highest level confirmed deputies (the very top spots just under AG are confirmed by the Senate), as well as her top non-confirmed ones were grotesquely political. EVERY policy or far-reching decision made at that level had politics as the first or a major concern (no, other AGs didn't neceesarily act like that). PC ruled supreme, and Reno would send out a Major New Initiative every week, such as Protecting Indian Burial Grounds, Stop Prejudice To Undocumented Workers (don't you love that eupemism?) and Stamp Out Sexual Harassment (a regular). Gorelick, one of Reno's Miami girls, was a MAJOR policy player who was a straight pipeline to DNC and various Dem campaigns. Need a helpful fundraisng opinion? Call Jamie. Would it loosen some puckered sphincters to stifle the many separate investigations going on into Huong, Chinese espionage, weapons- radar- telemetry-onboard-computer systems in exchamge for campaign money? Consider it done. Most all the old-timers were fairly hard to surprise, but even they were no-shit shocked when the pardons-for-$ broke on Inauguration Day 2001. Reno' and her top deputies twisted themselves in knots trying to justify violating decades of policy to get what they wanted, like prohibiitng standard investigations into the clemency requests, avoiding seeking opinions from the prosecuting agency and prosecuting attorney, etc., andinstaed just giving it a "made as instructed" appraisal and green light to the prez.
Ed Meese was not so bad, seemed to think his troops knew what the hell they were doing and let them do it. Ashcroft is queer for Exciting New Programs, jiggered figures and self-congratulatory GIGO findings (did you know that under Ashcroft we've completely eradicated crime?) and being shocked, shocked to find prior administrations were obviously composed of drunken self-abusing agnoostic cannibal lesbians, thank God he's on the case now.
Least exasperating AG? William French Smith (affect a "Randolph Scott"-type reverence from Blazing Saddles"). Ahh. Big investiigations, big problems; little investigations, little problems; no investigations; nooooooo problems.