What About Ashcroft?
John Ashcroft has long been the bane of the Left, and is seemingly a fairly easy target for the Kerry/Edwards campaign. But not much has been made of him, which is a shame--he's too much of a zealous idealogue to be Attorney General of the United States in my view and he's pretty much been a failure, as Slate notes:

What about the tool the government demanded from Congress to police the domestic terrorist front? The USA Patriot Act has been used almost exclusively to pursue non-terrorist cases. On Dec. 1, 2003, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reported that at least two-thirds of the searches relying on provisions of the Patriot Act were in money-laundering cases, with no terrorism connection whatsoever. As of May 2004, the Patriot Act had led to 310 charges against individuals and 179 convictions. But only a tiny fraction of these cases could be described as involving terrorist activity, and essentially none of that tiny minority involved an actual or threatened attack within the United States. In the end, the Patriot Act has been principally used to support allegations totally unrelated to terrorism, such as uncovering evidence against bribery and corruption involving strip clubs in Nevada, computer crimes, and sex crimes against children. Even when used in circumstances that arguably are related to terrorism, the alleged plots were in support of wholly foreign terrorist activity, such as support of Chechen rebels or Hamas—activity in no way representing a domestic threat. In a July 2004 report purporting to confirm the great utility of the Patriot Act in protecting Americans, the Justice Department was able to detail at most seven examples of the use of the act against foreign terrorist activity and less than four sets of convictions or guilty pleas involving fewer than 20 individuals.

Most notably, when asked how many of the 310 charges resulted in acquittals or dropped charges, Byron Bender of the Boston Globe reported that Ashcroft claimed to have no information. What happened to all those lost cases? Were they more examples of resources directed at non-terrorist activity, and futile efforts at that? Or were those the cases of supposed domestic terrorism, in which the DOJ failed?

Although the Ashcroft Justice Department has been careful not to provide clear statistical evidence, the available data points to an abysmal record on the domestic terror front. We paid the price of expanding limitations on traditional rights of citizens in the adoption of the USA Patriot Act, but have not been rewarded with the promised benefits by the Ashcroft Justice Department. If Ashcroft were a CEO with this abysmal record, he would have been replaced long ago.