WASHINGTON: The Bush administration faced new skirmishes on the home front over the weekend as senators called on Attorney General John D. Ashcroft to appear before the judiciary committee to justify extraordinary anti-terrorism measures.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, and the ranking Republican on the committee, Senator Orrin G Hatch, called on Ashcroft to put aside “several hours” to answer questions about military tribunals, racial profiling, and the authorization of wiretaps of phone calls between suspects and their lawyers.

“I think the attorney general owes the country, certainly owes the Congress, an explanation,” said Leahy. Ashcroft will appear before the committee in early December, Leahy said.

Leahy criticized the Bush administration’s declared intention to try terrorist suspects before military tribunals, which can keep secret evidence from defendants, and which can convict suspects and impose the death penalty with only a two-thirds vote. The Vermont Democrat said that using such courts sent the wrong message about the values the US was trying to defend overseas.

Leahy, who voted against ratifying Ashcroft’s nomination, said that there might be situations that warranted military tribunals, but that they should be implemented with congressional guidelines.

“I don’t know why all this has to be done by fiat at the White House,” he said. “Why not trust the normal process of our government?” He said Congress had already given the administration sweeping new powers in legislation passed after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, and he said members of both parties were upset to read in the newspapers of other “ad hoc, outside the justice system methods” the administration was planning.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle also joined the criticism. “I think we’ve got to be very concerned about some of the suggestions made,” he said on Sunday. He said it was important to strike a balance between fighting while making sure “we don’t trample on the constitutional rights that we have fought to protect for over 200 years.”

The administration has faced broad criticism of anti-terrorist measures that contradict normal legal procedures. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.