Who'd have thought John Ashcroft would be the one to come out of the Bush administration with a shred of decency intact. Of course, when you're succeeded by Alberto Gonzales, that bar isn't set particularly high.

Nonetheless, Ashcroft is speaking out in sharp counterpoint to the increasingly shrill fearmongers in his party who insist that we're only safe if we give up on the rule of law.

In an interview with the Huffington Post at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the former Bush administration official said that there are "a variety of tools that ought to be available to an administration" in its efforts to curb terrorism and bring terrorists to justice. Asked specifically about holding civilian trials for terrorists, he said such a venue "has use and utility." When asked how to distinguish whether to use a military tribunal system or criminal courts for terrorist suspects, Ashcroft said: "It depends on the circumstances." "Our priority should be a priority of preventing further terrorist attacks and to automatically allocate people from one system to another without understanding what best achieves that priority would in my judgment be less than optimal," he said.

He also defended Mirandizing terror suspects.

"When you have a person in the criminal justice system, you Mirandize them," Ashcroft said flatly, when asked by HuffPost about the reading-of-rights that has conservatives outraged at the Obama administration.

Ashcroft will undoubtedly now be vilified by the "torture first, ask questions later" crowd for recognizing that our system of justice is perfectly capable of handling terror suspects. Nonetheless, his sober assessment shows just how extreme the Cheney crowd is, and why Dems should not allow the Cheney crowd to dominate the debate.

Another data point on that: the American public has no problem with terror suspects being Mirandized. Dems have to take the advantage back on these issues and realize that they can win the national security argument.