Lots. I stand by my original comment. Missouri does not have a "Justice Department", they have an Attorney General's Office. And John Ashcroft was such a moderate when he was in Missouri that the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the communist Riverfront Times endorsed him for his second term as governor, while conservative stalwart Phyllis Schafley condemned him. The story is ridiculous on its face and sounds like an internet legend, attempted face-saving beside the point. And if the book "Strange Justice" really has such a story (which I doubt - type it in here, please, with page number), it's just another stupid, leftist lie from the left-wing author.
I will not hold my breath waiting for confirmation from either of you.
Lessee, the original story was:
When Ashcroft first started working in the justice department, long before he became attorney general, he had a boss who relentlessly ridiculed his uptight attitude. The boss was Clarence Thomas.
It was subsequently corrected to state that: Ashcroft and Thomas both worked in the Missouri Attorney General's office in the mid-1970's. The Missouri AG at the time was John Danforth. I did get the location and perhaps the relative status of the two individuals wrong. The events I mentioned are detailed in the book Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas. You may find fault with this book, but the story is not implausible.
It seems to me, Timmy, that your retort doesn't refute any of that. I'm not buying Strange Justice to research the issue, but I don't have to--the statements in the book are elsewhere on the net: "Thomas liked to taunt another member of the office, who was prim and painfully shy, by making outrageous, gross, and at times off-color remarks. '...He couldn't help but to needle the guy--he just liked to get under his skin,'" said a co-worker. "The target of Thomas's taunting was John C. Ashcroft,"...Another co-worker interviewed by the authors of "Strange Justice" who also remembered such episodes described Ashcroft as "a tightly wound, straitlaced teetotaler...[he] was easily flustered by Thomas." Ashcroft's discomfort "apparently encouraged Thomas to goad him further," the co-worker noted."
The book has only 'co-workers' sourced, but the authors are WSJ reporters. I tend to doubt WSJ reporters and unnamed sources. Two reasons to dispute the story right there--but you didn't put forward any reason at all in your 'rebuttal' post. You simply 'stood by your original comment,' which had nothing to do with the corrected post.
One would suppose that this would be easily verified by anyone who had seen the actual friendship between these two before Thomas' appointment hearings, which have supposedly prompted a change in his behavior. There don't seem to be many of these folks around talking on the issue. Obviously, Ashcroft and Thomas are still friendly. But this kind of thing would be hard to confirm even if they weren't.