Posted on 04/03/2008 8:16:25 PM PDT by Right-Wing Champion
ASHCROFT, CRITICS FACE OFF
Former U.S. attorney general peppered with questions in wide-ranging talk at Skidmore College
By MARC PARRY, Staff writer
SARATOGA SPRINGS -- Nobody threw eggs. The crowd didn't walk out in protest. But John Ashcroft was treated to a verbal grilling Wednesday as a guest speaker at largely liberal Skidmore College. An overflow assembly of more than 600 people questioned Ashcroft, President Bush's former attorney general, about the war in Iraq, abortion, torture, surveillance, drugs and immigration. A gay student asked him about gay marriage.
"You can have a relationship, you just can't have the special status," Ashcroft said. "You're not going to get all the benefits that the culture assigns to couples that are likely to produce the next generation."
Ashcroft's appearance, arranged by conservative students, had aroused opposition on a campus where only five students voted Republican in the presidential primary. A vandal drew a swastika on a poster promoting the event.
The visit began with a friendly audience: a cocktail party at the Surrey Williamson Inn attended by Republican students and leaders like former gubernatorial candidate John Faso.
In an interview there, Ashcroft, 65, said his wife, Janet, had been born in Albany. Her father was an Army scientist at the Watervliet Arsenal, he said.
Asked whether he regretted anything about his tenure as attorney general, Ashcroft said he wished he had better explained the Patriot Act, which gave law enforcement agencies more power in the fight against terrorism.
Ashcroft said he had not read about the controversy that preceded his arrival.
"I cannot express affection for the symbolism of Nazis," Ashcroft said. "But I will defend the right of people to speak freely and to protest my appearance.
"Part of what it means to be a leader is that people will have disagreements with you. My career has been spent making sure that people who want to disagree with me have the right to do so."
Ashcroft's lecture sparked tremendous interest. The 279-seat Gannett Auditorium was nearly filled 90 minutes before the talk, when State Police cleared it to walk through with a bomb-sniffing dog. Students spilled into the aisles, the lobby, the student center and a second auditorium.
Ashcroft's speech, on leadership, veered from Revolutionary War history to an account of the days following the Sept. 11 attacks.
The former Missouri senator got some laughs at his own expense, pointing out that he was "the only person in the history of the universe ever to lose his Senate seat to a deceased opponent" -- a reference to his November 2000 loss to Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, who died in a plane crash a month before the election.
He drew hollers of disapproval when he accidentally called Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama "Osama."
One student, Jamie Worrall, expected Ashcroft's talk to reverberate in classroom discussions. "There are so many topics that were brought up tonight," said Worrall, 21, of Massachusetts. "It's just quite overwhelming."
* * * * *
Also worth checking out are these reports that highlighted the controversy surrounding his speech at the notoriously liberal Skidmore College in upstate NY:
http://www.saratogian.com/WebApp/appmanager/JRC/BigDaily?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pg_article&r21.pgpath=%2FTST%2FHome&r21.content=%2FTST%2FHome%2FTopStoryList_Story_1827305
http://capitalnews9.com/default.aspx?ArID=113481
http://wnyt.com/article/stories/S397990.shtml?cat=300
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=676995&category=SPORTS&newsdate=4/1/2008
I was making this same mistake frequently myself. Now, I've just started calling him Barack Hussein. That took care of the Obama Osama problem.
>> at largely liberal Skidmore College. An overflow assembly of more than 600 people
fish in a barrel
This is such a shame. When I lived in NY from the 1950’s - 1960’s Skidmore was all girls, fairly exclusive and expensive school. It went coed in the 80’s I guess the students their now have taken on the Liberal approach to entertaining a guest on campus.
Maybe they should rename “Skidmore” to “Slipmore,” since they seem to be sliding more and more to the left. I heard
John Ashcroft speak in Memphis (before he was our attorney general)at a family values rally. I loved what he had to say about his godly father. Much later he was asked by the press what he thought of Islam. He said, and I quote, “Islam
is a religion that sends their sons out to die for their god. But Christianity is a faith that has a God that sent His Son out to die for for His enemies.”
Oh My!
“Islam is a religion that sends their sons out to die for their god. But Christianity is a faith that has a God that sent His Son out to die for His enemies.”
Thank you very much for that post.
That's alright chicky. We understand that liberals have a hard time processing information larger than a soundbite at a time.
“Islam
is a religion that sends their sons out to die for their god. But Christianity is a faith that has a God that sent His Son out to die for for His enemies.”
Love that statement, you gotta love this guy.
Skidmore has always been lib.....I can’t imagine sending my kids there.
I disagree. It was the college’s Young Republican Assembly that sponsored Ashcroft’s visit, which was (according to other reports) partially funded by the ultra-dominant Republican party of the Saratoga County region. Plus, ol’ Joe Bruno (R) is still Senate majority leader of the whole state.
God bless John Ashcroft.
John Ashcroft is a true patriot and we should be thankful that people such as himself are dedicated to the preservation of liberty and justice in our society. I found his book “Never Again” very informative.
And yet if the speaker were Janet Reno, the mass murderess of innocents at Waco, the little Marxists would have stood in line to fallate her.
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