tfpl

                             I’M FROM MISSOURI, JOHN
(Written and posted 13 November 2001)

Dear Mr. Ashcroft:

I have read where you have decided that it is now okay to eavesdrop in on conversations between inmates and lawyers for the sake of “national security”, and that we should trust you to not abuse the privilege. Well, John, I don’t think it is quite that easy to gain our trust. As the esteemed Congressman Vandiver once said, “I’m from Missouri; you have to show me.”

So far, John, what you have shown me does not lead me to trust you. I have had the privilege of voting against you when you ran for governor in 1984 and 1988, and for the Senate in 1994. You see, John, you cloak yourself in the mantle of Christianity. You have made it known throughout your career your membership in the Assemblies of God. Is it really “you”, or was it just politically expedient when you were first starting out? After all, your home county, Greene County, is the home of the Assemblies of God. It is also the home of Evangel College, Drury College, Central Bible College, and Baptist Bible College, all fundamentalist, Christian, non-minority private institutions. Let’s not forget neighboring Polk County, devoid of any minority population, and home to that bastion of liberty, Southwest Baptist University, which, when I was living in Southwest Missouri, was known for expelling students who dated without chaperones. Let’s not forget the minuscule minority population of Springfield itself, which, when I lived there, represented a whopping 3 percent of the total population. Let’s throw in the fact that there are so few Catholics, Springfield has to share a bishop with a city one-fifth its size.

Your politics is a perfect match for southwest Missouri, an area in which being a Democrat is political suicide. However, as we both know, it didn’t play as well in the more Catholic and ethnically diverse areas of the state. You just happened to be lucky enough to run when the Democrats did not have any credible candidates. But, that didn’t stop your arrogance. Remember the time that you ordered the Jefferson City School District to stop showing a play that dealt with teen pregnancy because it offended you, and you, after all, were the governor? They didn’t, did they. You see, your type of right-wing politics doesn’t play well in a predominately Catholic city like J.C. Of course, your anti-Catholic Protestant fundamentalist attitude didn’t win you any friends, either.

But that didn’t stop you. You were the governor, after all, which gave you the right to violate your state’s constitution. You remember, don’t you? When you would travel out of the state and refuse to transfer authority to the Lieutenant Governor as prescribed by the Missouri constitution? What was his name again? Oh yeah, Mel Carnahan. The dead man who beat you. The man who succeeded you to the governorship. The man who earned your ire when as Treasurer he dared tried to break up the favoritism shown by certain officials to certain individuals. Remember the Ozark Mountain High Road? Is it me, or does it seem odd that a friend of yours just happened to own big chunks of the land where the road was going to go?

Unfortunately, the shenanigans did not end when you left the governorship. Remember Ronnie White? You know, the black Supreme Court justice whose nomination to the Federal bench you personally scuttled. What was the lame excuse again? Oh yeah. He was soft on crime. He overturned too many death penalties. Of course, you have never let facts cloud your judgment. After all, Judge White sustained more death penalty sentences than some of your appointees to the court, but he was soft on crime. Right.

Remember the blackface incident? Sure you do. When Mel decided to challenge you, you got a bit scared, and pulled out a picture of Mel in blackface taken in 1960 at a local charity minstrel show, and then tried to portray Mel, a friend of minorities, as a racist. Of course, it didn’t work, and made you look petty and mean, but it was worth the gamble, right? Here’s a newsflash -- the world is different than it was in 1960. What was acceptable then, is no longer acceptable. There are things that I did in my twenties that I would not do now. It’s called growing up.

You know, John, I would have thought that losing to a dead man would have humbled you quite a bit. But it doesn’t seem to have. After all, it takes a great deal of arrogance to usurp the authority of a state. Oregon voters decided to allow physician-assisted suicide; yet, you have taken away a right the voters granted by threatening to arrest any Oregon doctor who exercizes this legal right. Oh how about that raid that your buddy, fellow Clinton inquisitor Asa Hutchinson, conducted on the folks in California who legally provide medicinal marijuana? I guess you have shown those sick people on the West Coast, haven’t you? How dare they vote for the Democrat! Let them eat cake! John Ashcroft is the Supreme Law of the Land!

So, John, based on your history, I do not trust you with one iota of power. you have not shown me, nor the people of our home state, that you can be objective.

I do want to thank you, though. Before you became governor, the Democratic party was moribund. While the Democrats dominated the legislature, Mel was it for Democrats in statewide office. Since you left the governorship, Missouri has now elected two successive Democratic governors (one of whom served both possible terms) for the first time since the 1960s, a Democratic lieutenant governor, attorney general, a Democratic United States Senator, and has voted Democratic in the past three presidential elections. Perhaps you can work the magic you worked on the Missouri Democrats on the national party.