Obeying Our Masters

This Inquirer story tells us that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld a ruling in 2006 dismissing a claim against Saudi Arabia, a Saudi charity, four princes and a Saudi banker of providing material support to al Qaeda before the September 11 attacks, saying that they could not be held liable because of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

This is particularly significant in this area because the law firm of Cozen O’Connor filed the action on behalf of several dozen insurers that paid out billions in claims to businesses at ground zero. They were joined in the legal action by law firms representing victims and survivors and various other commercial interests that suffered losses in the attacks, as the Philadelphia Inquirer tells us.

And as this prior post will tell you, if there is ever a legal venue in this country that is Bushco-friendly in a particularly odious way, it is the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.

As noted, they issued “a bad reading of federal law” when they let gun manufacturers off the hook in response to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s lawsuit, and they also let former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman “skate” as well, ruling that she could not be held liable for assuring residents near Ground Zero that the air was safe to breathe (overturning a verdict against Whitman issued by U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts, who stated that Whitman’s actions “shocked the conscience”).

And this is the court where Judge Dennis Jacobs presides, the man who ruled that Medicaid funds could be denied to disabled people, even though he knew that this, in his words, could be “a death sentence for some patients.” And he also thinks free speech claims from a student newspaper are “silly.”

Really, though, what other possible outcome could have resulted, given the fact that (as noted here), there are nations in this world who no longer want the dollar to be the world’s reserve currency, but the Saudis interceded to prevent a disastrous switch from the dollar to other currencies from taking place?

After reading about this, if you don’t want to push “full throttle” and sparing no expense towards the goal of energy self-sufficiency (making the Saudis irrelevant to the point where we no longer have to do their bidding), than you never will.