Editors' Note: Of course, the mainstream newspapers titled this story with more superficial titles like "Ashcroft Blasts Judges," but his quotes make clear one of the most under-reported stories of the past four years -- an Attorney General who disdains and breaks the law when it interferes with his administration's goals.

While we have taken no position on the nomination of Alberto Gonzalez to succeed the just-resigned Ashcroft, we hope his confirmation hearings will reveal whether he has the integrity and basic respect for our Constitution and Bill of Rights that we've found sorely lacking (example) in Mr. Ashcroft.

WASHINGTON - Outgoing Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday that "dangerous and constitutionally questionable'' rulings by federal judges that challenge the president's powers in wartime are jeopardizing national security.

Ashcroft's Justice Department has been dealt a string of court defeats in recent months calling into question the administration's anti-terrorism strategies. In a speech before the conservative Federalist Society on Friday, he called the trend "profoundly disturbing.''

"The danger I see here is that intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations in these critical areas can put at risk the very security of our nation in a time of war,'' Ashcroft said.

"Our nation and our liberty will be all the more in jeopardy as the tendency for judicial encroachment and ideological micromanagement are applied to the sensitive domain of national defense,'' he said.

The combative remarks were Ashcroft's first since the White House announced Tuesday that he is stepping down. President Bush has nominated White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to succeed him.

Late Friday, Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, called on the Bush administration and Gonzales to renounce Ashcroft's remarks, which he said showed "clear disdain for the rule of law.''

Ashcroft's comments were not the first time he has attacked those who have questioned the administration's counterterrorism initiatives.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, he issued a warning that became a defining moment in his tenure: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists.''

Ashcroft also mocked librarians who worried about the government's use of the Patriot Act to obtain reading records, calling them "hysterical.'' Facing tough questions from the commission that was investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, he lashed out at one of the commissioners, declassifying a potentially embarrassing memo she had written a decade earlier.

When Ashcroft resigned, he struck a mission-accomplished tone for his tenure, claiming Americans' safety had been achieved. He reiterated Friday that there had not been an attack in the more than three years since Sept. 11, 2001. But there have been few courtroom victories for him to point to on the terrorism front.

The most recent court setback was a federal judge's ruling Monday halting the military commission trial of Osama bin Laden's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan. U.S. District Judge James Robertson rejected the Bush administration's blanket decision to deny prisoner-of-war status to detainees at the Guantánamo Bay U.S. naval base, in Cuba.

The Justice Department has pledged to appeal the ruling, which raises larger questions about the military legal framework the administration crafted to try terrorism suspects captured around the globe since the Sept. 11 attacks.

© 2004 Knight Ridder News

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