PRESS RELEASE
LaRouche Says Congress Must Tell Bush to Pull Back Ashcroft Nomination Before They Agree to Certify Electoral College Votes
WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 3, 2001 (EIRNS)--Speaking today before an audience that included diplomats and journalists from 6 continents, Lyndon LaRouche called on the United States Congress to hold up President-elect Bush's certification, currently scheduled for January 6, until he pulls back his nomination of Missouri Senator John Ashcroft as Attorney General of the U.S.
LaRouche was responding to a question from a representative of the Congressional Black Caucus, who questioned Ashcroft's ability to uphold the principles of the U.S. Constitution, given his ardent support of Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy. The questioner asked what could be done from the House of Representatives, given that no member of the Senate Judiciary Committee has so far indicated a willingness to mount a serious challenge to Ashcroft's certification.
LaRouche responded, "The Ashcroft nomination was an insult to the Congress. If the Democrats in Congress, capitulate to the Ashcroft nomination, the Congress is finished."
LaRouche compared the situation to that which existed in Germany on February 28, 1933, when the famous Notverordnung [emergency decree] was established. Operating on the basis of rulings by Carl Schmitt, a famous pro-Nazi German jurist, the emergency act gave the state power to designate which part of its own population were "enemies," and to imprison and/or execute them, freely. "This," LaRouche said, "was the dictatorship."
Calling the Ashcroft nomination a deliberate provocation, LaRouche said, "If the Democratic Party and decent Republicans do not combine to throw that nomination back in the face of the nominator, this Congress isn't worth anything. That is, because it will have surrendered its dignity.
"If you give those kinds of powers, of a Justice Department, to that Ashcroft, and what he represents, under that [Confederate] flag, you don't have any justice left in the United States. And, any Senator who disagrees with me, shouldn't be a Senator. It's going to be up to the people to make sure....
"Members of the House of Representatives, do have some powers. They may not be the formal powers of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but they have some powers. And if the Congress makes it clear, and gets some of the Senators, the Democratic Senators, also to make it clear, that we are not going to put up with this Ashcroft provocation, we can stop it. But little protest movements are not going to do. You are going to have to jam the works up on this one. You're going to have to make it impossible for Bush to get his nominations through, as long as that Ashcroft nomination is not eliminated. He'll pull back. You get the determination to make him pull it back; he'll pull it back. You've got the strength to do it."
LaRouche went on to remind the questioner, "Remember, the Congress has not yet certified the President-Elect! I think that the question of certifying the President-Elect is also a question, this Ashcroft question, to be thrown on the table, on the question of certifying President-Elect Bush, so- called, as President. It's an act that has to be done by the Congress. I would pull every string in the book that's serious, as a legislative string, to make sure that Ashcroft is not made the Attorney General. And, I think that members of the Congress, members of the Democratic Party, should act on that point, as if their life might depend upon it. Because the lives of many of them might just depend upon that."
The full transcript of LaRouche's remarks is available at www.larouchepub.com.
