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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...

Former Boeing instructor pilot Anthony Keyter has filed a federal civil lawsuit against Boeing, alleging that the Chicago-based aerospace company plotted to murder him. Boeing test pilot Anthony Keyter says that Boeing plotted to kill him. The lawsuit indicates that Keyter lives in Gig Harbor and that he is representing himself. The suit, filed Monday with the U.S. District Court of Western Washington, charges that Boeing plotted to kill Keyter after Keyter filed another civil complaint against President George W. Bush. "President Bush, via his agents, contacted high level executives of The Boeing Company and initiated a criminal plot to...

After entering the House of Representatives in 1995, Georgia Republican Bob Barr acquired a reputation as one of the most conservative members of Congress. It was Barr who in 1996 wrote the Defense of Marriage Act, which said states didn't have to recognize gay marriages performed in other states; it was Barr who protested when he learned the military allowed soldiers to practice Wicca. A former federal prosecutor, a firm social conservative, and a strong supporter of the War on Drugs, Barr doesn't fit most people's image of a civil libertarian. But in his eight years in Congress (he failed...

Remember the Downing Street Memos? Since you have probably forgotten, those were the documents that led to the impeachment of President Bush. Oops! That impeachment never took place but do you remember how the Jeff Gannon "scandal" brought down the Bush Administration. You probably forgot all about Jeff Gannon as well and that "scandal" also did not result in impeachment. However, both of these events sent the Leftwing Blogosphere into a hopeful frenzy because they thought that AT LAST they had the goods on Bush. Well, now we are seeing another impeachment straw that the leftwing is desperately grasping...

According to a Wonkette operative who heard this from two different sources, Republican Senator Kit Bond is going to bail on the Hill and become Chief Lord of the University of Missouri.

Update: You can read an excerpt of the book at Town Hall.Update: Audio of the chat is archived here.

In recent times, the killing of those who are "in a coma" and a "persistent vegetative state" begins with the 1976 case of Karen Ann Quinlan, who stopped breathing after a drug overdose. Her family wanted to kill her by removing a respirator and the New Jersey Supreme Court agreed. It was thought that removing the "life support" would result in her death. As it turned out she lived nine more years until she died of pneumonia in 1985. The one voice in the mainstream media of the day that didn't want the respirator taken off was wondering how much...

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission), an independent, bipartisan commission created by congressional legislation...is chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks...

The US Justice Department filed a motion Friday to quash testimony by wife of bioweaponeer William Patrick III in the lawsuit: Steven J. Hatfill, M.D. v. Attorney General John Ashcroft, The Department of Justice; The Federal Bureau of Investigation (et al). Headed by former federal prosecutor Tom Connelly, pro bono attorney's for Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, the former person of interest in the anthrax letters case, have been quietly doing battle behind the scenes with attorney's for the US Justice Department, in the United States District Court for The District of Columbia. Dr. Steven Hatfill's life was publically dismantled, rendering...

Back in July, the Justice Department held a bells-‘n-whistles press conference to announce a major case: a 42-count indictment, charging seven men and an ostensible charity with underwriting Hamas to the tune of nearly $60 million. Hamas, a ruthless terrorist organization dedicated to the annihilation of Israel and responsible for numerous gruesome attacks that have claimed the lives of hundreds of victims — including Americans — has been formally designated as a terrorist organization under various U.S. laws for many years. In announcing the indictment, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft could not have been more straightforward: “To those who exploit good...

January 30, 2005 Kofi Annan’s son admits oil dealing Robert Winnett and Jonathon Carr-Brown THE son of the United Nations secretary-general has admitted he was involved in negotiations to sell millions of barrels of Iraqi oil under the auspices of Saddam Hussein. Kojo Annan has told a close friend he became involved in negotiations to sell 2m barrels of Iraqi oil to a Moroccan company in 2001. He is understood to be co-operating with UN investigators probing the discredited oil for food programme. The alleged admission will increase pressure on Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, who is already facing...

Stepping Down Tuesday, January 25, 2005 By John Gibson On Monday, John Ashcroft (search) retired and all around the world legions of horrified Ashcroft-phobes breathed a sigh of relief. After all, this was the guy who not only wanted the Patriot Act (search), he wanted it beefed up. "What?" the world squawked. "Doesn't this Ashcroft know about human rights, individual rights, the rights of minorities, the rights of Arabs who happened to be in America, the rights of Muslims who happen to be passing through America? Ashcroft trampled all these rights!" At least that's what they like to say in...

Links not updated yet, this was just announced on 97.1 Talk FM. The Chief of Police and his assistant/deputy are in FBI Custody. There is to be a press confrence at 2:30 to announce the details. All indications is that this is in regard to an investigation into Voter Fraud that began immediately after the November presidential election.

WASHINGTON — An Iraqi-born American citizen pleaded guilty Tuesday to several charges as part of the federal investigation into the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, becoming the first person to be convicted in the growing scandal. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the agreement with Samir Vincent, accused of being an unregistered Iraqi agent between the first and second Persian Gulf wars. [SNIP] The case is being handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York. The criminal indictment and plea deal were filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York. [SNIP] The Justice Department said that from 1992 to...

SO THE TWO subjects in which Democrats are currently most interested are: (a) torture, and (b) the burning question of Abraham Lincoln’s sexuality. No joke. I guess this is what a liberal “agenda” looks like. Both the New York Times and Time magazine have spilled ink on the was-Lincoln-gay question, thus adding precisely nothing to substantive discourse. Liberals are still so depressed over Bush’s victory that they’ve resorted to mocking the only Republican they haven’t called stupid: the Great Emancipator himself. After Democrats lose again in 2008, I look forward to reading about Gerald Ford’s bedwetting problem. Somewhat improbably, the...

What Real Torture Is While questioning Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales, Republican-of-the-Year Arlen Specter (PA) asked the hard-hitting question: “Do you approve of torture?” It almost reminded me of the time Specter asked Bill Clinton during his impeachment if he believed in sexually harassing women at the workplace. Oh wait, that didn’t happen. Specter and his friends (Democrats) were quite upset at Gonzales’s involvement in presidential initiatives allowing aggressive “tools of persuasion” against Al-Qaida terrorists. They feared another reign of terror, as seen under John Ashcroft, whereby murdering lunatics weren’t given five-star hotel accommodations, massages, and discounted tennis lessons. And...

John Ashcroft has resigned as Attorney General, under fire in the media for supposedly violating the human rights of terror suspects. But perhaps he didn't crack down hard enough and fast enough. Consider the case of a "well-respected" leader of the Muslim community, a scholar who befriended Jews, a peacemaker who worked for years towards inter-faith understanding and a better community. On January 13, 2003, however, Cleveland cleric Fawaz Damra was arrested by the FBI at his Cleveland area home and charged with lying on his citizenship application by not disclosing a previous arrest and ties to terrorist groups. Damra...

Summing Up Let's sum up, OK? In 2000, the Republicans intimidated black voters in Florida and refused to count their ballots so Bush was elected Dictator for Life. Bush appointed John Ashcroft to head up the KGB and threw all dissenters into prison. No, that's not quite right. The Republicans won in 2000 because they conspired with the Supreme Court which selected the fascist illiterate moron George W. Bush in preference to Albert Gore, Jr., an erudite Alpha male who dressed in earth tones. No, that couldn't be right, either. The Supremes would have had no role in the election...

It might seem odd to compare and contrast two news stories from last week – the resignation announcement of Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Paris death of Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat. But an examination of the two demonstrates the degree to which the "news" media’s compass of objectivity is so terribly misaligned. To read the coverage, you’d think Ashcroft was the tyrant, and Arafat the liberator. On November 10, the New York Times front page put the two stories side by side in the top left-hand corner. Reporter Elisabeth Bumiller told readers the "polarizing" Ashcroft was resigning after a...

The ruins of the World Trade Center were still burning when federal agents arrested two men at Kennedy Airport who were found with more than $140,000 hidden in cardboard boxes with honey jars bound for Yemen. For the agents, aware that terrorists were said to use honey shipments to hide money, that slender lead could not be ignored. If the world was suddenly different for everybody back then, in October 2001, with federal agents and prosecutors both properly alarmed and also under sudden pressure to make terrorism cases, they still relied on old techniques developed in generations of Mafia and...

There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that Attorney General John Ashcroft has resigned. The good news is that this is the last time I'll have to offer this annoying full disclosure thingamajig: My wife works for John Ashcroft. These clunky full disclosures are frustrating, but they're nothing compared to what my wife had to endure as chief speechwriter to the most unfairly vilified public official in modern memory. Jessica's a brilliant and gifted writer, but she could be Shakespeare and the media would focus on the stodginess of Ashcroft's iambic pentameter. Conversely, the AG could read...

Yes, the coverage of Arafat's death has been sickening — but so was the coverage of him in life. So this is of a piece. As you may have read, a BBC reporter started to cry when speaking of Arafat. They loved him so, as much as they loved Guevara, and probably a little more than they love Castro — for Arafat's primary enemy was Israel, the nation they just may hate most. A reader e-mailed me, "Jay, I was watching CBS News, and the anchor described Arafat as 'a dedicated thorn in the side of the Israelis.'" Yes, that's...

have had the privilege of meeting with and speaking with many of you on numerous occasions over the past four years. Today, with gratitude toward my fellow Americans, I address you near the close of my time as the Attorney General of the United States. On November 2nd, I submitted to the President my resignation from the office of Attorney General. The noble work of justice preceded my appointment to this office, and it will continue after I am gone. But my official service to this great cause is drawing to a close. We have accomplished what we set out...

Late breaking news has it that John Ashcroft has tendered his resignation. Only their joy at his departure could stimulate the liberal media into using the words "Ashcroft" and "tender" in a single sentence. If you think that sculpting Moses with a horn is funny, then the depiction of Ashcroft with two horns and a tail is hilarious. And four out of five liberal dentists recommend painting Ashcroft holding a trident. Not to put too fine a point on it, he has been mythologized into everyone's favorite monster. How did this happen? This is a mild-mannered Missourian whose Senate office...

President Bush met with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in the Oval Office, and nominated Alberto Gonzales, currently the White House counsel, to succeed John Ashcroft as US Attorney General. President's Veterans' Day Proclamation [Veterans' Day is tomorrow] Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island!

Nothing follows yet .. look for official announcement soon.

Ashcroft is also a man of enduring faith in God, a faith that guided his stewardship of the Department of Justice and that often drove his critics mad. But that faith was a necessary part of his most difficult job in our country's most difficult time. And it was a blessing to us all. In his farewell message to the Department of Justice, he expressed gratitude for a successful tenure and underscored the challenges the country had faced over the last three years: I express my gratitude to God for the each day the sun rises on a free and...

President and Mrs. Bush made a trip to Walter Reed Army Medical Center today to visit at the bedside of soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with their families. Afterwards he stopped to make a few comments to the press. The President also accepted the resignations of Commerce Secretary, Don Evans and Attorney General, John Ashcroft, and thanked them both for their service.Earlier in the day, First Lady Laura inaugurated the re-opening of a two block area of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of Lafayette Park, as a pedestrian walkway following a one year rennovation. She and the President will...

CHICAGO, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Russian underworld figures and Nigerian e-mail scam artists are no longer responsible for most of the spam arriving in U.S. e-mail inboxes. The latest research indicates most spam on the Internet in the United States is now generated domestically -- not overseas. "American spammers are the driving force," Phyllis Schneck, vice president of CipherTrust Inc., an Internet security firm in Atlanta, said. Experts say that is not just an interesting tidbit. It is explosive information, because it means legislation passed by Congress last year to curtail spam has not worked, and many Internet marketers who...

Sandy Who? Two weeks ago, Republicans were filled with glee, as Democrats fell all over themselves, trying to diminish the fact that Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser, Samuel Berger, better known as Sandy, was caught stuffing classified documents and national secrets down his drawers, in his jacket, in his socks, and in a leather portfolio, in order to steal them from the National Archives, and to later destroy some of them. (Berger returned some documents, but only after he was caught, and had “accidentally” destroyed the most important ones.) Note that Berger reportedly burgled the Archives on as many...

Republicans are filled with glee, as Democrats fall all over themselves, trying to diminish the fact that Bill Clinton's former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, was caught stuffing classified documents and national secrets down his drawers, in his jacket, in his socks, and in a leather portfolio, in order to steal them from the National Archives, and to later destroy some of them. (Berger returned some documents, but only after he was caught, but had "accidentally" destroyed the most important ones.) Note that Berger reportedly burgled the Archives on five separate occasions. Watergate, meet BVDgate. For the past thirty years,...

Republicans are filled with glee, as Democrats fall all over themselves, trying to diminish the fact that Bill Clinton's former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, was caught stuffing classified documents and national secrets down his drawers, in his jacket, in his socks, and in a leather portfolio, in order to steal them from the National Archives, and to later destroy some of them. (Berger returned some documents, but only after he was caught.) Watergate, meet BVDgate. For the past thirty years, many observers have thought it the height of paranoia for Pres. Richard Nixon's men to burglarize the offices of...

THANKS to the 9/11 commission, we now know that the movie got the story right. The administration was repeatedly warned in advance that disaster could strike America. The planning for that contingency was nonexistent. Once hell broke loose, there was only chaos at the top. As New York collapsed into terror, the amiable but overmatched president turned in desperation to his older, arrogant vice president and asked, "What do you think we should do?" The movie I describe is not "Fahrenheit 9/11" but a Hollywood special-effects extravaganza that beat it to the theaters by a month: Roland Emmerich's "The Day...

On the June 2 NBC Nightly News, Brokaw announced: "An award- winning film about President Bush and his team, by documentarian and liberal activist Michael Moore, will show up in American theaters after all. The Walt Disney Company at first refused to release the film for political reasons, so a separate partnership was formed headed by the Weinstein brothers of Miramax Films. They began publicizing the film, Fahrenheit 9/11, today with selected clips." NBC viewers were then treated to film excerpts with a fast- paced rock musical background. Bush in black tie at a podium at a dinner: "This is...

New York City won a significant victory this week in its civil suit against the firearms industry, winning the right to information that could help prove its claim that the industry closes its eyes to the way guns get into the hands of criminals. On Wednesday, a federal magistrate ruled that the city was entitled to federal data that traces the path of guns used in crimes, overruling objections by the Justice Department. Lawyers say that without the data the city would have difficulty proving its claim that the gun industry's marketing and distribution practices amount to a public nuisance....

Cheerleaders for TerrorismBy Erick StakelbeckFrontPageMagazine.com | June 17, 2003 Two groups whom Islamic terrorists can count on for sympathy and support are radical lawyers and their counterparts in American law schools. Lynne Stewart is a hero of the National Lawyers Guild and a sought-after campus lecturer. While out on bail under indictment for colluding with a terrorist leader, she has been a sought-after speaker for law school audiences who relish her attacks on Attorney General John Ashcroft as a modern-day fascist and on her country for its imperialist and racist policies. Stewart made national headlines in April 2002 when she...

Print Article         Close Window     Gorelick Licked By Published 4/14/2004 12:05:12 AM His testimony is likely to be overshadowed by the president's news conference, but Attorney General John Ashcroft served notice yesterday that he is one administration player not afraid at all to go on offense against the Democratic louts on the so-called 9/11 commission. The full effect of the bombshell he dropped yesterday afternoon will take some time to settle. "The single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents," he said in his stirring and air-clearing opening remarks....

Graphics of the Gorelick memo

In her first year as Deputy U.S. Attorney General in the Clinton administration, Sept. 11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick was warned that lax U.S. immigration policies made the U.S. a tempting target for terrorists, former FBI Director Louis Freeh revealed on Monday, suggesting that Gorelick did little to remedy the situation. "Protecting our homeland from attacks by foreign terrorists had long been the FBI's priority," said Freeh, in a lengthy Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. "Back in September 1994, I recommended to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick that the DoJ strengthen investigative powers against suspected 'undesirable aliens,' accelerating deportation appeal...

According to NBC News Staffer, Bob Kur, reporting on the Ashcroft testimony before the 9/11 Hearings this afternoon, "Ashcroft's" testimony was the workout of a strategy to take the heat off "Bush's" failings. Kur reported that Ascroft tried as hard as he could to cover up the failings of the Bush Administration and to put the blame on the previous administration. No mention was made of Ashcroft's seemingly genuine anger and consternation at the Wall of Separation between FBI and CIA - a wall that Ashcroft noted was re-inforced as late as 1995 under Janet Reno. Kur's report emphasized that...

Jan. 28, 2004--Earlier today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-profit legal watchdog group, sent a letter to President Bush asking that he call upon the White House Counsel to investigate Vice President Cheney's confirmation of leaked classified information in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News on January 9, 2004. Federal law prohibits leaking classified information. Confirming information that has already been leaked is also prohibited. In his Jan. 9th interview, Mr. Cheney referred his interviewer to a story that appeared in The Weekly Standard's November 24, 2003 issue. The story, written by Stephen F. Hayes, discussed...

Gorelick Memo Exposes 'Feckless' Clinton Policy Posted April 13, 2004 By Kenneth R. Timmerman In a dramatic moment of his testimony before the 9/11 commission this afternoon, Attorney General John Ashcroft released a previously classified memo from 1995 that instructed the FBI and U.S. Attorneys around the country to ensure they had "walled off" overseas intelligence information from domestic crime-fighters. The separation between overseas intelligence gathering and domestic criminal prosecution has been widely criticized by both Democrats and Republicans on the committee for having helped make the 9/11 attacks possible. "[T]he simple fact of Sept. 11 is this," Ashcroft testified:...

Today, John Ashcroft stood tall, showed the warrior that he is, and did this country a great service by giving the best explanation yet about why the US failed to prevent 9-11. In doing so he cut through all the spin and partisan smoke and got to the real issue. According to Ashcroft, three things contributed: 1. Failure by the Clintonistas to have a clearly articulated plan to kill Bin Laden. Plans that were in place were confusing and amounted to dangerous contingency plans to “capture” him You had to love Ashcroft’s comment, which I paraphrase here as- “They couldn’t...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite increasing concern about terrorist threats to the United States, the FBI before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was hampered by a culture resistant to change, inadequate resources and legal barriers, the national commission investigating the attacks said on Tuesday. "From the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, FBI and Department of Justice leadership in Washington and New York became increasingly concerned about the terrorist threat from Islamic extremists to U.S. interests both at home and abroad," said the report, presented at a commission hearing. Attorney General John Ashcroft, his predecessor, Janet Reno, former FBI Director...

Republican staffers on the 9-11 Commission are looking for a way to place commission member Jamie Gorelick before the body she sits on to explain the Clinton Justice Department's seeming lack of interest in counter-terrorism activities. According to a Republican commission staffer, some are outraged at the continued leaks by Democrats on the commission, which are being coordinated to embarrass upcoming members of the Bush Administration set to testify before the commission. The latest example was a memo from the spring of 2001 issued by the Department of Justice, with newly confirmed Attorney General John Ashcroft signing off on it....

<p>WASHINGTON — Condoleezza Rice isn't the only one with a lot riding on her appearance Thursday before the Sept. 11 commission.</p> <p>If panel members appear politically motivated in their questioning of the national security adviser, it could raise questions about their credibility — and the findings in their final report this summer.</p>

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make His face shine upon us,That Your ways may be known on earth, Your salvation among all nations.May the peoples praise You, O God; May all the peoples praise You.May the nations be glad and sing for joy, For You rule the people justly and guide the nations of the earth. Psalm 67: 1-4

Please pray for Attorney General John Ashcroft who is in intensive care for gallstone pancreatitis. I think he needs all the good prayers we can muster. Thank you.

Over the holidays, I had the opportunity to visit with some of my more progressive friends in Kansas City, and several alerted me to a rather scary development: U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has become a Nazi – "another Hitler" as one fretfully described our former governor and senator. This all came as news to me. Although I do not know Ashcroft personally, I did sit next to him at a dinner just a few years ago, and he exhibited no signs of latent Nazism: no heel-clicking or arm-thrusting, no anti-Semitic slurs or "sieg heils," no quiet yearnings for the...

<p>John Ashcroft wants to know the science behind the "protecting the life of the mother."</p> <p>Proponents of the gruesome procedure known as partial-birth abortion like to argue that it is medically necessary. If so, you'd think they'd be eager to present evidence proving their case.</p>