WASHINGTON - Civil liberties warriors are once again having a field day over a decision by Attorney General John Ashcroft, this time his sweeping new policy of mass fingerprinting and photographing of foreign visitors.
About 100,000 of them coming here each year from countries that may have harbored terrorists and thousands more already in this country are to have their fingers rolled and their mug shots taken in what the critics attack as racial and ethnic profiling.
Mr. Ashcroft already was their favorite target for a range of actions out of his Justice Department. These have included detaining unidentified terrorist suspects and witnesses without warrants and unilaterally restating government policy toward gun ownership to support the National Rifle Association's contention that it is an individual rather than a collective right.
None of this has come as much of a surprise to anyone who has followed Mr. Ashcroft's political career as attorney general and governor of Missouri and then as a U.S. senator, until the voters turned him out of office in 2000.
At the time of his confirmation as attorney general by the Senate, his old colleagues who were very familiar with his record as a zealous defender of gun-toting and fierce foe of abortion decided to give him what liberal Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut called "a second chance" to show he could be even-handed in his prospective new job.
Mr. Ashcroft was quick to assure the Senate Judiciary Committee that in moving from a legislative to an executive role his law-making was over and he would confine himself at Justice to carrying out existing law. That extended even to Roe vs. Wade, which protects the abortion rights he abhors.
Once safely installed at the Justice Department, however, he became the John Ashcroft the senators knew, pushing his own agenda and giving civil liberties short shrift with such policies as eavesdropping on conversations between detainees and their lawyers. Had there been no Sept. 11, Mr. Ashcroft at Justice may not have mattered much. But after Sept. 11, he became a point man in the war on terrorism, in which role he even implied to Congress that its criticisms of him would aid the terrorists.
All this is old stuff, to be sure, but his record and his latest sweeping crackdown on foreign nationals, with only a hazy description of what criteria are to be used in singling them out for fingerprinting and photographing, make him an easy target for the civil libertarians.
At a minimum, it's a question of whether Mr. Ashcroft is the best man to defend, on their merits, what very well may be justifiable anti-terrorist policies. On one hand, he is a convenient lightning rod to draw criticism from the president. On the other, he can be depended on to trigger a knee-jerk hostile reaction from civil libertarians whenever he takes any action.
As long as the war on terrorism seems to be going well, it may not matter all that much that Mr. Bush's choice for attorney general is taking heat, especially from individuals and groups suspect to many Americans either as disloyal or naive about the threat to the nation.
But if the anti-terrorism effort runs into rougher waters, Mr. Ashcroft will be hard-pressed as a credible voice for the administration because his record, as opposed to his words, before and since becoming attorney general, has generated such controversy and animosity.
Of all of Mr. Bush's Cabinet appointments, this one is the most troublesome. In a wartime environment particularly, the nation's chief law enforcement official should be one who commands the confidence and respect not only of the man who gave him the job, but of all Americans.
Jules Witcover writes from The Sun's Washington bureau. His columns appear Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.