You may think it unfair to pull a broader message from this tiny and relatively sweet incident. You may think Ashcroft's gesture does not necessarily bespeak some sort of larger truth about the current administration, its value system, the direction of the country, the overall misogynistic, monastic, dangerously unprogressive, hypocritical attitude of our leaders as a whole, or how we are enjoying at this very moment what is easily the most conservative, sexually terrified, ill-humored, anti-choice regime in 50 years.

You would be wrong.