Let's start with the bio:

John Ashcroft was the United States attorney general from 2001 to 2005. He now heads a consulting firm that has telecommunications companies as clients.

Hey, I wonder if Ashcroft's firm funnelled any money to Rockefeller? That would be too, too funny, wouldn't it?

And now the nut graf from Crisco Johnny's at-this-point entirely predictable Op-Ed from the Times:

If the attorney general of the United States says that an intelligence-gathering operation has been determined to be lawful...

Note the very revealing use of the passive voice. Determined by whom? Some Federalist Society operative chained up in Cheney's dungeon under the Naval Observatory?

We know that Bush bypassed the "sole means" for determining legality, the FISA Court, until 2006, when Democrats got elected to Congress. So, when the telcos were briefed that Bush's program of warrantless surveillance was legal, did they ask "Who made the determination and why?" If they did, I want to know the answer, and so should Congress. If they did not, they were negligent, and should be held to account.

... a company should be able to rely on that determination.

Isn't it pretty to think so.

"Should," indeed, except in the unlikely event that the government has been taken over by a gang of criminals.

Like now. Read more…

Spiky again:

The Senate Judiciary Committee, for example, has already planned a hearing next month featuring the first public testimony of former Office of Legal Counsel chief Jack Goldsmith. A one-time administration stalwart, he became convinced that Gonzales and other administration officials were breaking the law in eavesdropping on conversations of U.S. residents without judicial warrants, according to multiple former department officials.

Thereby causing Gonzo to "visit" Ashcroft in his hospital bed: Read more…

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, seen here on his way to visit the sick and elderly in a local hospital, has, for all intents and purposes, left the building. Read more…