by TChris

As he often does, Paul Krugman is asking the right question: "is Mr. Ashcroft neglecting real threats to the public because of his ideological biases?" Krugman wonders why Attorney General Ashcroft, who loves to make headlines when the Justice Dept. levels dubious accusations of terrorism against Muslims, hasn't said anything about the FBI's arrest of white supremacist William Krar, caught in possession of a lethal arsenal.

In the small town of Noonday, Tex., F.B.I. agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon — a cyanide bomb — big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot building.

Right-wing lunatics like Krar don't seem to merit Ashcroft's attention. His Justice Dept. instead focuses on the real bad guys: those who stand in the way of the concerns of big business.

Two weeks ago a representative of the F.B.I. appealed to an industry group for help in combating what, he told the audience, the F.B.I. regards as the country's leading domestic terrorist threat: ecological and animal rights extremists.

Animal rights activists and environmentalists don't go armed with cyanide bombs. They don't kill abortion doctors and they don't advocate the extermination of entire races. Funny how Ashcroft doesn't want to talk about the right-wing lunatics who are the real home-grown domestic terrorists.