Posted on 09/04/2009 2:09:30 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Ashcroft liable for detentions, court finds By Tony Romm - 09/04/09 04:18 PM ET
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft may be sued and held liable for wrongly detaining witnesses after the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.
In its decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Abdullah Al-Kidd, a U.S. citizen detained as a material witness for two weeks, may sue the former attorney general for breaching his constitutional rights. Al-Kidd claimed during the case that his brief imprisonment caused him to lose a scholarship and crippled his chances of finding employment, according to The Associated Press.
"Al-Kidd was not arrested and detained because he had allegedly committed a crime," wrote Judge Milan B. Smith. "He alleges that he was arrested and confined because former United States Attorney General John Ashcroft (Ashcroft), subordinates operating under policies promulgated by Ashcroft, and others within the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), unlawfully used the federal material witness statute ... to investigate or preemptively detain him."
I wonder if this will stand. If it does, Ashcroft should demand a jury trial in Lower Manhattan.
The 9th Jerkit Court of Appeals is at it again.
By the wacko “9th Circuit”. How come their chambers never get caught in those Califorina bush fires?
By the wacko “9th Circuit”. How come their chambers never get caught in those Califorina bush fires?
9th ?
They should be forced to buy carbon credits they produce so much methane gas from the BS they spew.
Maybe they just really, really like having their verdicts overturned.
That says it all!
It is not known as the 9th Circus for nothing.
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Congressman Billybob
Latest article, "A Fitting Legacy for Teddy"
"Ben Franklin will be in D.C., speaking and dressed this way."
Where’s Mark Levin?? Hey Mark, they’ve started, let’s get this done!
?? Bloggers put stuff up all the time here. Are you sure?
Well, if this guy was completely innocent of any wrongdoing and they locked him up on as mat-wit he may have a case.
Things were pretty insane after 911 and I would not be surprised if mistakes were made. If the government messed up they should make proper restitution and call it a day.
None of the money will come out of the former AGs pocket.
If this happened to me I know I would be pissed.
Maybe I’m going on out of date information. At one point, at least, Pipes was banned from FR as a “bigot.” I think I tried to post something from Pipes once and was greeted by such an auto-refusal. Of course one man’s bigot might be another man’s commonsense freedom fighter.
He may be attempting to bid up the settlement by pushing for a trial. Why, Obama himself might personally slip him some hush money.
...Abdullah Al-Kidd, a U.S. citizen detained as a material witness for two weeks, may sue the former attorney general for breaching his constitutional rights. Al-Kidd claimed during the case that his brief imprisonment caused him to lose a scholarship and crippled his chances of finding employment......so would the gallows. Or a bullet in a sensitive area. Y'know, apropos of nothing. Hey, at least he wasn't forced to wear panties on his head.
Oh my. Wouldn't it be a shame if someone mentioned FDR...
We need background on this supposed Judge. Obviously New York is a breeding ground for the Hate America first judicial crowd. Sotomayer et al.
This is the 9th circus court. If they hear an appeal, the Supreme Court will overturn it. If not, we should be ready to go after Obama with law suits out his you know what for the rest of his life. Americans can file law suits as well as Muslims.
Al-Kidd was arrested because he had listed “jihad” on a Web site as one of his “interests,” which the FBI not unreasonably interpreted as a reference to holy war; he “sold tapes and books containing the teachings of radical sheikhs” when he lived in Idaho, and he owned a video that “had to do with the hijacking and terrorist events on September. 11, 2001.” Would you have just let him go without checking him out?
You know I was just reading a thread about the Obama school issue in another forum whereas there are many far left types that post often. They were all whining about how the right was not showing repect for the office of the President and playing the “we all need to get along” card because America is becoming too divided.
Yet this is what this President is doing. He is now going to use his power to go after the past administration and prosecute them for differences in opinion over war policy. It is the left-wing still that shows no respect at all for America and is dividing us.
As long as they continue to push their radical agenda whereas they show more respect to our enemies abroad then they do to conservatives here at home then the gloves have to come off.
The socialist fascist left are the lowest of the low.
9th circuit is how the SC will look after Obama gets through with it.
I thought the Supreme Court in it’s recent Iqbal decision ruled that such officers as the US AG could not be sued and were not liable for the actions of their subordinates. (This was a very similar case, with an accused terrorist saying he wanted to sue the government.)
Does the 9th want to open that issue again?
They were in fact extraordinary times and given we were all waiting for the next shoe to drop and the feeling that the next attack was imminent, I feels the governments actions in this case were quite reasonable.
However reasonable, understandable and even necessary the governments actions may have been, they may not have been “technically” legal, which is why we have a legal system to seek redress in such cases.
The bottom line is that Jihad boy is a US citizen and has the same constitutional rights as we do. We may not like it but we will probably have to give him some cash.
When the next city is attacked, the feds will react exactly the same way, do what they got to do and then let the lawyers sort it out. This is the sorting it out part.
If you are subverting your own country thats called TREASON. No cash payout, you do not get to go past Go, you go straight to jail.
I guess but the Supreme Court will overturn it.
Hopefully the Nutty Ninth Circuit will be overturned by a higher court, as they have the highest rate of reversals of all the federal districts. There are a few sane members of the 9th but most belong in a gulag.
the world is upside down.
everyone who felt their actions were done in service of their country after 9/11, will now be prosecuted for it.
The fireman who stood next to Bush when Bush declared that the terrorists will soon hear from us,...will now be prosecuted for unofficially campaigning as a civil servant.
the liberals will be relentless in their pursuit of destroying all things that make this country strong.
and our conservative leaders are only lukewarm in response. Where are our attack dogs? Only Cheney has stepped up.
I was thinking about adding to my Arsenal tomorrow with a new S&W Sigma 40 that’s on sale at Turners.
Now I’m sure I’m going to.
On the one hand, I believe the general immunity enjoyed by bureaucrats is way abused. On the other hand, there’s this little thing called precedent.
The higher up the food chain a bureaucrat is denied immunity, the narrower the focus has to be, for the simple reason that if you get to high and too broad, that precedent will inevitably ripple down through the entire government and be used to overturn a whole lot of other administrative decisions.
Obviously, this can be extremely good in some instances. But to deny the arrest of suspected material witnesses concerning a major terrorist attack on the country is ridiculously broad, and would be catastrophic if upheld.
Thus I suspect the SOTUS will smack this down. The 9th is simply making, once again, a left-wing solidarity statement.
"Members of the panel, all appointees of Republican presidents . . "
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