Here's an oft-quoted tidbit from Southern Partisan magazine right from the horse's mouth:

"Your magazine also helps set the record straight. You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like Lee, Jackson and Davis. 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."

In other words, John Ashcroft is one of those "The Civil War wasn't about slavery! It was about states' rights (to continue the abominable practice of slavery because otherwise we'll have to have an actual legitimate economy and that will change our insanely easy {to white people} way of living)!" types. He's willing to stick his neck out to defend "Southern Patriots," yet just recently he played a huge role in overturning Oregon's assisted suicide law (doctors who are known to participate in euthanasia are to be denied the ability to prescribe federally controlled drugs, making them in effect, powerless). And now, he's sending the DEA in full force to render California's 1996 medical marijuana initiative entirely useless.

States' rights, huh? So, states should be able to decide whether or not to subordinate and viciously abuse an entire "category" of people (and then peacefully secede from the rest of the nation without a fight), but don't even think about letting their cancer patients peacefully commit suicide with the aid of a doctor, or smoke a joint (to those of you who don't know, the only thing close to marijuana in stimulating hunger is megace, a nasty synthetic form of progesterone hormone with a list of side effects too multitudinous and tangential to list here). Ashcroft is a staunch defender of the tobacco industry. In favor of cigarette manufacturers, he is quoted with saying "People should be allowed to make bad choices." Yet he's also one of the biggest "drug warriors" in American politics. Figures.