With Ashcroft going, America's a bit safer, unless of course his successor is just as bad. One of the candidates for Ashcroft's successor is Bush's White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales, who's been responsible for several memos suggesting that POWs from Afghanistan aren't protected by the Geneva Conventions and that torturing captives may be ok. So we may not be safer once he's in place. Another candidate is Larry Thompson, former deputy attorney general, who's currently the general counsel for Pepsico. He's black, which is for some reason still politically interesting, but he's also indicated that he likes working at Pepsico. NYT's latest rumors favor Gonzales. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Cabinet.html?oref=login (Requires free login - use some fake email address if you don't have one.)