John Ashcroft is still wrong: When he said doctor-assisted suicide was “not a legitimate medical purpose” in 2001, Ashcroft was wrong, and the Supreme Court confirmed it today when it refused to support the Bush administration’s attempt to punish Oregon physicians who help terminally ill patients die under the state’s assisted suicide statute.

In a harbinger of things to come, the Gang of Three — Chief Justice John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — found themselves together on the far right arguing that federal officials have the power to regulate the doling out of medicine: “If the term `legitimate medical purpose’ has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death,” Scalia wrote in the dissenting opinion.

Of course, if it’s the state — sanctioned by the Supreme Court — putting to death blind, deaf, crippled, 76-year-old Clarence Ray Allen with an overdose of prescription drugs, I suppose that’s constitutes a “legitimate legal purpose.”

I think assisted suicide should be legal everywhere and available in the way that Kurt Vonnegut envisioned it: The Ethical Suicide Parlor is associated with Howard Johnson’s. When an individual gets so depressed by the state of the world and so disheartened by the lack of ability and leadership in the government, he goes to HoJo’s, has a free meal, complete with his choice of 39 flavors of ice cream. After dinner, he goes next door to the suicide parlor and, in a comfortable, soothing environment, is gently euthanized by a beautiful buxom blonde.

Maybe Ashcroft would approve of that — nah.