What's so bad about Attorney General John Ashcroft ? This Baltimore Sun editorial today, calling for his retirement from Government, lays it out as clear, concisely and convincingly as anything we've read to date. Please, read the whole thing. Here's some:

PLENTY OF John Ashcroft's former Senate colleagues had misgivings when George W. Bush nominated him to be attorney general.

They knew him to be more ideological than intellectual, more judgmental than judicious, and altogether more small-minded than what might be hoped for in a candidate for the top domestic Cabinet post.

Yet Mr. Ashcroft has not merely lived up to his colleagues' expectations during his first two years in office, he has wildly exceeded them, as documented in a recent profile by The Sun's Michael Hill.

He is the nation's chief law enforcement officer, but seems intent on bending both the law and the Constitution to his will.

He has run roughshod over his own federal prosecutors, directing them to seek the death penalty in specific cases rather than use their own discretion.

He has ignored his promise not to impose his religious views on others by seeking to overturn the assisted suicide law in Oregon and by prosecuting Californians who participate in a state program authorizing the medical use of marijuana.

Worst of all, he has taken advantage of the fearful American climate in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to chip mightily away at American freedoms.

He bullied Congress into passing the so-called USA Patriot Act, which makes it easier to wiretap conversations and track Internet activity of private citizens and to detain potential suspects or witnesses.

Congress balked at another Ashcroft program that encouraged Americans to spy on one another. But now he's coming back asking for the power to make secret arrests, strip citizenship from those with certain political associations and further invade the privacy of Americans.

He all but charges treason against those who raise civil liberty concerns. Such critics give "ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends" and "erode our national unity and diminish our resolve," Mr. Ashcroft said. He contended that complaints about his heavy-handed investigative methods are designed to "scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty."

But he's the one who is truly scary.... Now it's time to retire Mr. Ashcroft from government, as Missouri voters intended.