For the motorist with aching bones there was the "five-motor body massager with 20 magnets" at a one-day-only price of £31.18. And the £25 Champagne and Caviar Collection was an essential item for any self-respecting party host. Britain's first television shopping channel is marking ten years of must-have gadgetry and gushing presenters. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you."They say: "When I am President of the United States, there will be no John Ashcroft trampling on the Bill of Rights." - John Kerry, Massachusetts Senator and Democratic candidate in 2004"John Ashcroft is a man of great integrity, a man of great judgement and a man who knows the law." - President George Bush, when nominating Ashcroft to be Attorney General in December 2000. We shouldn't legislate immorality.""Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. US Attorney General2001-presentHobbies: Singing, songwriting, playing piano, fishing, tennis, hiking, dirt-biking.He says: "It is said we shouldn't legislate morality Well, I disagree I think all we should legislate is morality.

He insists there is no contradiction; that Justice Department lawyers can manage But many think that an outside prosecutor is inevitable. In which case the kindred spirit of a president could be taking the decision that might yet be that president's undoing.LIFE STORYBorn: David John Ashcroft 9 May 1942 in Chicago, Illinois, son of J Robert Ashcroft, an Assemblies of God minister.Family: Married Janet Elise Roede 1967; two sons, one daughter.Education: Yale University (graduated with honours 1964), University of Chicago Law School.Church: Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal group whose headquarters are in Ashcroft's home town of Springfield, Missouri.Political career: Attorney General for Missouri 1976-85; Governor of Missouri 1985-1993; US Senator for Missouri 1995-2001. For Democrats this is as blatant a conflict of interests as it gets; surely the person supervising the investigation cannot be rigorously impartial in his treatment of Rove, who did so much for himself and his boss.This is Ashcroft's dilemma, pitting the office against the man. Rove masterminded the 2000 presidential victory, and was also a paid consultant on both of Ashcroft's gubernatorial campaigns in the 1980s, as well as his winning Senate race in 1994. Which leads back, indirectly, to "Leak-gate" - and to the man presumed by many to be at the eye of the storm. He is Karl Rove, the President's most influential adviser and architect of the "get out the God vote" strategy for 2004.Among the many things that Bush and Ashcroft share is Rove's hand in their biggest election triumphs. The two men share the same Manichean view of the universe, and the same God-given certainty - so infuriating to their foes - in the rightness of their cause.No less important, Ashcroft is a vital bridge to Christian Conservatives, a core Bush constituency whose mobilisation is essential for his re-election in 2004.

Ashcroft may now be the most powerful Attorney General since Robert Kennedy, and for much the same reason: a very close relationship with the man in the Oval Office.Spiritually, the "common-sense conservative" is on the same wavelength as the born-again Christian and self-proclaimed "compassionate conservative" George Bush. Meanwhile, Zacharias Moussaoui, the sole individual charged with being part of the attacks, is making a laughing stock of the federal government No matter. For all the changes at the FBI, which the Justice directs, and for all the people arrested since 11 September (many of them held in circumstances which violate any reasonable reading of the Constitution), Americans say they feel no safer than they did before the terrorist attacks. Failure, however, catapulted Ashcroft into one of the four great offices of the federal government.His achievements as Attorney General may be questionable. After Carnahan's wife Jean indicated she would take up the Senate seat, a sympathy vote propelled her late husband to victory.

A year later he even toyed with a run for the White House himself, before concluding that the Bush juggernaut was unstoppable.Nothing, however, during a career in elective politics was as bizarre as the manner of its ending. In November 2000, Ashcroft the incumbent was defeated by a challenger in his grave - the state's Democratic governor Mel Carnahan who had died in a plane crash three weeks before polling day. Not surprisingly, when the Monica Lewinsky affair surfaced in January 1998, Ashcroft was the first senator to call for Clinton to resign. He opposed abortion and gun control, and earned a 100 per cent conservative rating from the influential Christian coalition in its assessment of Congressional voting. By then the young man was set on a political career.The start was not impressive, mostly defeats until he won a close election to become Missouri's attorney general in 1976, a post he held for six years before serving two terms as governor. Back home, it was not the intensity of his religious convictions which made him controversial, but his views on the old south and segregation, and in particular his ferocious opposition to the appointment of a black Missouri judge to the federal bench.Once elected to the Senate, Ashcroft's record was exactly as the form book suggested.