Former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s Case to Supreme Court Wednesday

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

The Obama administration's top advocate at the Supreme Court will stand before the justices on Wednesday and defend Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft in an effort to help him stave off a civil suit filed by a man picked up by federal agents and held against his will.

Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal will argue that Ashcroft should be immune from a lawsuit brought by a Kansas native who claims his Fourth Amendment rights were violated in 2003 when he was stopped from leaving the country and held in custody under severe conditions for more than two weeks.

Abdullah al-Kidd says Ashcroft’s leadership of the Bush Justice Department following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks led to an unconstitutional practice of using material-witness laws as a pretext for arresting and detaining suspects without probable cause.

Lower courts, including the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, have ruled that Ashcroft is ineligible for the legal immunity normally offered to high-ranking government officials for actions that fall within their official duties.

"Seeking and obtaining a material-witness warrant is a core prosecutorial act, and a prosecutor is absolutely immune from any claims based on that act," Katyal wrote to the high court in his brief defending Ashcroft. In asking the court to hear the case, Katyal said that if the former attorney general is forced into a trial courtroom it will “substantially chill officers in the exercise of important governmental functions.”
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That sound you hear is of left-wing heads exploding.