Politics: All Hail The Charm City Sun!

The Baltimore Sun today delivers a brilliant editorial on why John Ashcroft should step down as Attorney General and leave our rights alone. The whole thing is dead on the money, but here's a nice excerpt:

He is the nation's chief law enforcement officer, but seems intent on bending both the law and the Constitution to his will.

He has run roughshod over his own federal prosecutors, directing them to seek the death penalty in specific cases rather than use their own discretion.

He has ignored his promise not to impose his religious views on others by seeking to overturn the assisted suicide law in Oregon and by prosecuting Californians who participate in a state program authorizing the medical use of marijuana.

Worst of all, he has taken advantage of the fearful American climate in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to chip mightily away at American freedoms.

Yes. It's all true, every word of it. In the final graph, the editorial refers to Ashcroft's 2000 Senate defeat at the hands of the late Mel Carnahan and delivers the crushing blow: "Now it's time to retire Mr. Ashcroft from government, as Missouri voters intended." Indeed.