John Ashcroft |
Thurgood Marshall |
Outgoing Attorney General John Ashcroft
will change his name to Thurgood Marshall as part of
the administration’s effort to unify the country
when making future Supreme Court appointments. The late
Justice Marshall was the first African American jurist
on the court, and one of the court’s most liberal
voices.
Ashcroft, having achieved security, law and order during
his four-year term as the nation’s top law enforcement
officer is reportedly preparing himself for a lifetime
seat on the US Supreme Court. Since Ashcroft may have
generated some divisive voices during his term at the
Justice Department, the Bush administration believes
that a name with a familiar ring might get the nomination
past even a conservative Senate Judiciary Committee.
“A Thurgood Marshall by any other name, is not
as acceptable, ” a Bush administration spokesman
said. “The people that elected Bush to a second
term will not bother to check whether the nominee is
the late Justice himself or a well-known musical star
of Fahrenheit 9/11.
There is precedent for the Bush action within his own
family history. When Marshall retired from the court
in 1991, George Herbert Walker Bush scoured the nation
for a suitable replacement for a Justice who had given
the African American community decades of leadership
and constitutional scholarship on the court. Finally,
the elder Bush found Clarence Thomas, who he called
“the best available choice” at the time.
Ashcroft says he will not go along with the Bush administration’s
plan to put on black face in the style of Al Jolson,
to make the appointment totally an affirmative action.
“This is already one of my most embarrassing moments
since I lost to that dead guy,” Ashcroft said,
referring to his 2000 defeat in the race for Missouri’s
US Senate seat, won by the then-late Governor Carnahan.
Ashcroft admits that he may not meet the standards of
Justice Thomas on the bench, but says unlike Thomas
he would cloak naked breasts on any statues within the
US Supreme Court building.
In addition to Justice William Rehnquist who is suffering
from ill health, the Bush administration expects to
make future appointments to the Supreme Court in his
second term. Nominees are already being gathered by
the Bush team after Ashcroft. Among those being considered
are Charlton (Moses) Heston, Kentucky’s US Senator
Jim Bunning, and would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley.
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