Topic: WorldNetDaily
As we've already seen, WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein is no longer keeping up the pretense of being fair to Elena Kagan -- he's clearly out to smear and destroy her any way he can. Now he's just throwing the smears out so sloppily, they've become laughable to anyone knowledgable about the facts (which, unfortunately, is not WND's target audience).
Check out his new May 12 WND article:
President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, helped shield Saudi Arabia from lawsuits filed by families of 9/11 victims seeking to target countries and leaders who helped finance al-Qaida.
[...]
"I'm very concerned about her views on executive power and her views with respect to the separation of power," Stephen A. Cozen, the lead attorney in the case for 9/11 victims, told WND.
"I believe she must be asked questions about whether or not citizens who are attacked inside the U.S. have the right to file suits domestically against terrorism financiers," said Cozen, the founder and chairman of Cozen O'Connor, a Philadelphia-based law firm with 24 offices throughout the country.
Cozen recounted to WND an April 2009 meeting he held with Kagen to present the case for his clients – thousands of family members and others affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks who sought damages from the Saudi kingdom, Saudi high commissioners and the country's rulers.[...]
Kagan's friend-of-the-court brief argued Cozen's case would interfere with U.S. foreign policy. She urged the Supreme Court not to hear the case.
n her brief, Kagan acknowledged inconsistencies with the lower court rulings and even conceded there were legitimate questions about whether the Immunities Act should apply in Cozen's case for the 9/11 victims.
Still, she sided with the Saudis, who had presented their case directly to Kagen that the terror victims lawsuit was harming U.S.-Saudi relations.
The Supreme Court sided with Kagen and refused to here the case.
Aside from the numerous grammatical errors -- "here the case"? -- and misspellings of Kagan's name Klein is hiding the truth about Kagan's brief.
First, Klein doesn't bother to explain the origin of Kagan's brief. When Cozen appealed his case to the Supreme Court after it had been dismissed by a federal appeals court -- which pointed out that U.S. law bars such lawsuits unless the State Department has found that a government provided material support for terrorist groups, which the government has not done regarding Saudi Arabia -- the Supreme Court in February 2009 asked the U.S. Solicitor General's office to weigh in on the case. The amicus brief that was filed was done so by the Solicitor General's office, not by Kagan herself, as Klein falsely suggests.
Second, while Klein claims that Kagan "sided with the Saudis, who had presented their case directly to Kagen that the terror victims lawsuit was harming U.S.-Saudi relations," he also couldn't be bother to explain the details of her argument (nor could he be bothered to provide a link to the brief). The Philadelphia Inquirer did the work that Klein won't:
Klein offers no evidence that her arguments deviated in any way from established law. Klein also offers no evidence that Kagan's deliberate goal in her brief is to "shield Saudi Arabia from lawsuits."Kagan, in a 22-page amicus brief filed yesterday with the Supreme Court, said U.S. law generally barred lawsuits against foreign governments for supporting terrorism unless they met narrowly tailored exceptions.
Kagan said none of those exceptions applied, and she advised the court not to hear the case.In her brief, Kagan said the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which governs lawsuits by American citizens against foreign governments, permits such lawsuits only if the U.S. State Department has issued a finding that the foreign government is a terrorism supporter, or if the government has been directly involved in a terrorism act within the United States.
It noted that the State Department has issued no such finding regarding Saudi Arabia and concluded Saudi government financial support for radical Islamist charities was too far removed from the 9/11 attacks themselves to cause the Saudi government to be liable.
The Supreme Court ultimately decided not to hear Cozen's appeal.
This is a sloppy, lazy effort by Klein whose only apparent purpose is to smear, not to enlighten -- kinda like his attack book on Barack Obama.
