Attorney General John Ashcroft is coming under increasing fire as critics and those in Congress move forward with legislative proposals to scale back the Patriot Act.

A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation last week that would gut major provisions of the Patriot Act, including the "sneak and peek" provision, which allows federal investigators to delay notifying terrorism suspects about search warrants. The House effectively voted to do the same thing to the provision, in an amendment attached to an appropriations bill in July.

Critics applauded the attempts at scaling back the Patriot Act, saying that Ashcroft has used the act to push a conservative agenda, politicize his office and curtail civil liberties. As they see it, Ashcroft is the very embodiment of the Patriot Act.

That's our view too. We recommend the whole article, particularly these comments by Sen. Richard Durbin: