Okay. Enough about Lott. Joe Conason asks, "What about Ashcroft?"

Like Lott, Ashcroft has lent his prestige to neo-Confederate publications and causes, notably the strange interview he gave to Southern Partisan magazine. And like Lott, he has cultivated connections with the Council of Conservative Citizens, which maintains its headquarters in his home state of Missouri. While Ashcroft was running for reelection to the Senate against the late Mel Carnahan in 2000, he met secretly with a CCC leader named Thomas Bugel to discuss the fate of a CCC member indicted for plotting to murder an FBI agent, among other offenses. When that meeting was exposed following his nomination for attorney general, Ashcroft claimed through a spokeswoman that he didn't know about Bugel's association with the CCC. Yet in addition to serving as the local president of the CCC, Bugel was for several years the leading segregationist on the St. Louis school board. Ashcroft had every reason to know exactly who Bugel is, because as attorney general and governor of Missouri, he too had played a divisive role in racial disputes. The strange story of Ashcroft's connections with the CCC is told here and here.

And so much more...