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Since John Ashcroft became US attorney
general last year, workers at the department
of justice have become accustomed to his
daily prayer meetings, but some are now
drawing the line at having to sing patriotic
songs penned by their idiosyncratic boss.
Mr Ashcroft, a devout Christian and a
grittily determined singer, went public with
one of his works last month, when he
surprised an audience at a North Carolina
seminary with a rendition of Let the Eagle
Soar, a tribute to America's virtues, which
continues: "Like she's never soared before,
from rocky coast to golden shore, let the
mighty eagle soar," and so on for four
minutes.
The performance was accompanied only by taped
music, but Mr Ashcroft's staff are
complaining that printed versions of the song
are being distributed at meetings so that
they will be able to join in.
When asked why she opposed the workplace
singalong, one of the department's lawyers
said: "Have you heard the song? It really
sucks."
A group of Hispanic justice department
employees were recently summoned to see the
attorney general, and went along hoping that
their boss might be making a special effort
to promote diversity in the department's
higher ranks.
Instead, they were asked to provide a hasty
Spanish lesson to give the secretary a few
phrases to use on a foreign delegation the
next day. The Hispanic staff were then handed
printed copies of Let the Eagle Soar and
asked for volunteers to translate it.
This is not the first time Mr Ashcroft's
subordinates have realised that this attorney
general is unlike ordinary politicians. Each
time he has been sworn in to political
office, he is anointed with cooking oil (in
the manner of King David, as he points out in
his memoirs Lessons from a Father to His
Son).
When Mr Ashcroft was in the Senate, the duty
was performed by his father, a senior
minister in a church specialising in speaking
in tongues, the Pentecostal Assemblies of
God. When he became attorney general,
Clarence Thomas, a supreme court justice, did
the honours.
In January, a pair of 12ft statues in the
atrium of a justice department building were
covered by a blue curtain, on orders from Mr
Ashcroft's office because the female figure
Spirit of Justice was bare-breasted, and the
body of her male partner, Majesty of Law, was
not sufficiently covered by his toga.
The cover-up has provoked an anti-Ashcroft
campaign by the singer and film star Cher,
who has toured the media circuit denouncing
his puritanism. She asked the Washington
Post: "What are we going to do next? Put
shorts on the statue of David, put an 1880s
bathing suit on Venus Rising and a shirt on
the Venus de Milo?"
Perhaps the most bizarre wrinkle in the
Ashcroft enigma emerged in November when
Andrew Tobias, the Democratic Party treasurer
and a financial writer, published an article
on his website accusing the attorney general
of harbouring superstitions about tabby cats.
According to the Tobias article, advance
teams for an Ashcroft visit to the US embassy
in the Hague asked anxiously if there were
tabby cats (or calico cats as they are known
in the US) on the premises.
"Their boss, they explained, believes calico
cats are signs of the devil," Mr Tobias
reported.
When asked about the veracity of the report,
the justice department said that it had made
Mr Ashcroft laugh. There has been no further
comment on the matter.
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