Proof that the US Government is Serious About Getting Citizens to Testify in Court

The US government is tired of sending summons to citizens and waiting for them to appear in court. The country has decided to get serious.

No more nice summons in the mail. Now they will imprison you and subject you to unlimited strip searches to make sure you are properly "motivated" to testify in court cases that the the police have decided are "serious". And of course the US Supreme Court fully agrees with this new vigorous interpretation of a citizen's "duty"...

From the BoingBoing blog:

The Supreme Court ruled today that former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft cannot be personally sued over his role in the arrest of an innocent American citizen, a Muslim man who was never charged with a crime. From the Associated Press:

By a 5-3 vote, the court said Ashcroft did not violate the constitutional rights of Abdullah al-Kidd, who was arrested in 2003 under a federal law intended to make sure witnesses testify in criminal proceedings. Al-Kidd claimed in a federal lawsuit that the arrest and detention violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.

He was held for 16 days, during which he was strip-searched repeatedly, left naked in a jail cell and shower for more than 90 minutes in view of other men and women, routinely transported in handcuffs and leg irons, and kept with people who had been convicted of violent crimes.

The ACLU's response to the ruling is here.

I can't wait to find out what the new court policy is on parking tickets. Maybe kill your first born if you don't pay promptly? Sell your wife and family off into slavery? I'm sure that these new "patriots" in the judicial system in the US will come up with something appropriate because they are serious, the mean business, and they are "getting tough" on slackers who don't take "justice" as seriously as they do.