Ashcroft, Resign!

Influential insiders say I should be linking to the Alliance for Justice’s Ashcroft, Resign! campaign, so I shall. But when you think about it, it would probably be better for Ashcroft not to resign. He’s bad, but he’s hated out of proportion to his actual badness (because he’s also weird — really weird), which means that on balance he’s a good motivator. If he resigned, he would just be replaced by someone as bad (or maybe worse, like his friend Viet Dinh) but who wouldn’t have the same motivational impact. At the same time, though, the AFJ people must be aware that it’s unlikely that Ashcroft will listen to them. The point of this campaign is to use Ashcroft’s hatedness in order to get people more involved in activism on civil liberties and other AFJ topics. And that would be a good thing. So head over to the site and sign the thing (but secretly hope he doesn’t resign) and let yourself get sucked into the many wonders of allianceforjustice.org — it’s also worth checking out their nominations site, IndependentJudiciary.org, where you can read about all the people who are getting on the bench while you’re reading what that nice Eugene Volokh has to say about things.