Word: ashcroft
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...after, scoping the possibilities of selling everything from long-grain rice to fiber-optic cable. "[The Cubans] need everything in the world--technology, farms, hospitals," says Ryan. "Illinois would be in a prime position to help them." In a key step toward that goal, Missouri's Republican Senator John Ashcroft, prodded by U.S. farmers desperate for new global markets, introduced a bill this fall to eliminate the stringent licensing rules on sales of food and medicine to Cuba...
...Ashcroft has clear support in the Senate--and behind the scenes among some in the Administration--since a Reuters poll last spring found that 67% of Americans favor ending the embargo. "It's hard for me to find anyone in this building who supports our Cuba policy anymore," says a State Department official. In Florida, where the most ardent anti-Castro lobby resides, a recent Miami Herald survey showed more people against than for the embargo. Meanwhile, cultural contacts between the U.S. and Cuba are at an all-time high, sponsored in large part by U.S. corporations like...
Still, it's too early to count out the embargo's tenacious Cuban-American lobby. Its chief muscle is in the House, where efforts similar to Ashcroft's have been killed this year. "Trading with the most anti-American dictator in the world is a cheap, cynical manipulation of farmers' emotions," said Jorge Mas, head of the Cuban-American National Foundation in Miami. Besides powerful Republican Senator Jesse Helms--who tightened the embargo in 1996 after Castro's air force shot down two small U.S. civilian planes near Havana--Mas has two other key allies: presidential contenders George W. Bush...
...Ashcroft's campaign against Judge White-- and whatever success it may bring to his campaign against Carnahan in 2000--sends the message to all state judges that if they want to get on the federal bench, they'd better start upholding some death penalties. When a case is hard, as Judge White found Missouri v. Johnson, and when the defendant's right to a new trial is unclear, how will those judges decide? The perverse political incentives make it seem inevitable that a defendant who may not deserve the death penalty will some day receive it because the judges...
...growing ever bolder and more numerous: Washington has relaxed restrictions on direct flights to the island, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue and Illinois's Republican governor George Ryan have both made strong appeals last month to end the embargo, while Missouri GOP senator John Ashcroft is currently promoting a bill to ease restrictions on sales of food and medicine to Cuba. The Ibero-American summit will likely fuel the anti-embargo argument, since the event has clearly provided a boon for the anti-Castro opposition inside Cuba, and whatever kudos Castro has accrued from the arrival...