The Supreme Court has ruled former Attorney General John Ashcroft cannot be personally sued for the wrongful detention of an innocent Muslim-American man. Abdullah al-Kidd sued Ashcroft after being jailed for 15 nights under the federal material witness statute before being released without charge. A federal appeals court had ruled Ashcroft circumvented the Constitution after the 9/11 attacks to hold al-Kidd and other innocent men without charge. But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled Aschroft is free of liability. Despite rejecting Kidd’s suit, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote it remains "unresolved whether [Aschroft’s] use of the material witness statute was lawful."
Origin
Democracy Gone Astray
Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.
All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.
[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]
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