In a case that one of the judges declared a “painful conflict between human rights and national security,” the winner was once again clear. And as has so often been the case recently, the winner was not human rights.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan dismissed today because allowing a hearing into the company’s apparent complicity in the extralegal detention, rendition and torture of detainees as part of a secret CIA program was trumped by the “need to protect state secrets.”
The result was a narrow 6-5 vote and even those judges voting in favor of the “national secruity” side of things insisted they did so reluctantly. The Bush Administration, and later the Obama Administration, insisted that the trial carried an “unjustifable risk” that Jeppesen’s defense would involve the leak of state secrets.
The dissenting judges insisted the ruling was too broad and was “dangerous as a means of hiding governmental misbehavior under the huise of national security.” Jeppesen’s involvement in the “extraordinary renditions” was initially uncovered in 2006, when a former employee insisted the managing director of the company bragged about how the company does “the torture flights” and that “it certainly pays well.”
"Judges are employees and servants of the State, Constitution has been rendered quaint and obsolete and they are just following steps set by all other tyrannical, despotic and authoritarian States have always taken.
Why do you need a military? You are already occupied and under effective control! A completely spineless population, without the simplest grasp of reality, and of course a more subtle aspect like justice, or honesty, does not threaten the regime!
A judge who places secret torture above human rights is a disgrace not only to the office but to humanity. Disgusting!!
The federal bench must protect the oligarchy.
Reluctantly for it? That's like being kinda pregnant. You either are or you're not and giving up this sort of excuse is simply cover for cowardice.
Injustice is the hallmark of every American government since the atomic bombing of Japan. When the American populace wakes up, and disengages from the nonsensical commercial media, and reality TV, it will have the power to cast out the criminals who keep up the same agenda year after year.