PRESS RELEASE
LaRouche Says: Confederate-Sympathizer Ashcroft Cannot Be Confirmed as U.S. Attorney General
Dec. 28, 2000 (EIRNS)--Unless John Ashcroft can lead the U.S. Senate to evidence proving that the purported interview with him in the Southern Partisan magazine was a hoax, the United States Senate must reject the nomination of John Ashcroft for Attorney General of the United States. "The Senate would be obliged to reject his nomination, on the grounds of a "glaring moral defect," newly declared Presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche said today.
LaRouche explained, if Ashcroft's interview is not a hoax, his professed sympathy and support for leaders of the slaveholders' Confederacy is implicitly support for those who attempted to split and destroy the United States of America in the mid-19th century.
LaRouche declared, that the Confederate Constitution of 1861, on which the Confederacy was grounded, was an explicit repudiation of the Constitution of the United States, and its commitment to promote the General Welfare. "An Attorney General of the United States must be sworn to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution," LaRouche said, adding that "it would be folly for the incoming administration to insist upon a person with such a glaring moral defect as the Southern Partisan expresses."
What Southern Partisan Wrote
In an 1998 interview with the pro-Confederate Southern Partisan magazine, Senator Ashcroft is quoted as praising the magazine for "setting the record straight" by defending leaders of the Confederacy who fought against the United States of America.
The interview was entitled, "Senator Ashcroft: Missouri's Champion of States' Rights and Traditional Southern Values." The lead-in to the interview stated: "In his short time in Washington, Senator Ashcroft has already become known as a champion of states' rights and traditional values." It is beyond dispute, that what the Southern Partisan means by "traditional values," is the pro-slavery culture and policies of the Confederacy.
During the interview, Ashcroft lauded the magazine for "defending Southern Patriots like Lee, Jackson, and Davis." He went on: "Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."
So as to leave no doubt where his sympathies lie, Southern Partisan quotes Ashcroft as expressing his support for Missouri's "government in exile" which was set up in Texas during the Civil War, while Missouri was occupied by Federal troops on behalf of the United States.
