{"id":6451,"date":"2011-12-06T00:01:21","date_gmt":"2011-12-06T08:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/06\/injustice-guaranteed\/"},"modified":"2011-12-06T00:01:21","modified_gmt":"2011-12-06T08:01:21","slug":"injustice-guaranteed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/06\/injustice-guaranteed\/","title":{"rendered":"Injustice Guaranteed"},"content":{"rendered":"

A rather unusual case is making its way to the Supreme Court.  Injustice will be done even if the four Justices are joined by one or more of the five Injustices in the better decision.  The case involves a man who was falsely arrested in 2006 for having the audacity to criticize a war criminal, ChickenHawk Cheney.  (I refuse to call him Dick, lest I be accosted by a gang of angry male body parts.)<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"6CheneyWarCriminal\"The US Supreme Court agreed on Monday to examine whether two Secret Service agents can be sued for arresting a Colorado man who criticized US policy in Iraq during a public appearance by Vice President Dick Cheney at a shopping center in 2006.<\/p>\n

Secret Service agents arrested the man, Steven Howards, in part because they did not like what he said to Mr. Cheney<\/strong>.  They later justified the arrest by claiming Mr. Howards lied to them about whether he \u201ctouched\u201d the vice president during the brief encounter.<\/p>\n

At issue in Reichle v. Howards is whether the two agents must face a civil trial \u2013 and a Colorado jury \u2013 over allegations that they conducted a false arrest and violated Howards\u2019s First Amendment right to express his political opinion in public to an elected official<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The agents claim the actions they took against Howards were part of their job<\/strong> protecting the vice president. They say they are immune from Howards\u2019s civil lawsuit and that it should be dismissed.<\/p>\n

A federal judge and a federal appeals court panel disagreed, ruling that Howards\u2019s lawsuit against the two agents could move forward<\/strong>. The Supreme Court is being asked to reverse those decisions.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the high court has made it significantly easier for government officials to defend themselves from allegations that they violated someone\u2019s constitutional rights<\/strong>. Many of the cases have arisen in the context of the war on terror and threats to national security\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Christian Science Monitor<\/a>><\/p>\n

The greatest injustice that could occur would be for Howard to get no relief.  The agents said the arrest was justified, because they heard him say on his cell phone that he intended to ask Cheney \u201chow many kids he\u2019s killed today<\/a>\u201d.  However rude, the question was certainly valid.<\/font><\/p>\n

The problem is that the wrong people are on trial.  Secret Service Agents are fanatic about protecting their charges.  They have to be fanatic to be willing to step in and take a bullet.  That is a good thing, even when the official being protected is a monster.  They were acting under Cheney\u2019s authority and according to Cheney\u2019s instructions.<\/font><\/p>\n

Cheney is the one who should be sued.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rather unusual case is making its way to the Supreme Court.  Injustice will be done even if the four Justices are joined by one or more of the five Injustices in the better decision.  The case involves a man who was falsely arrested in 2006 for having the audacity to criticize a war criminal, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}