Guess who’s sniping at Ashcroft?

If the New York Times is to be believed, Attorney General John Ashcroft has lost the allegiance of the religious conservatives whose strong support helped secure his confirmation in early 2001.

A check with those conservatives, including individuals named in the recent NYT story, finds that simply isn’t so. They may differ with some of his policies, but on the whole, they say they’re strongly behind him.

Indeed, it looks like the only “religious right” figures who really have it out for Ashcroft are one or two influential right-of-center types who have what the Weekly Standard calls an “Islamo-libertarian axe” to grind against the attorney general.

Could Wahhabi-funded fifth-column activity in the US try to undermine the Bush administration’s war on terrorism? It looks that way, as the Center for Security Policy discusses in today’s Decision Brief.