Padilla Sues Former U.S. Lawyer Over Detention

By way of Blue Girl, Red State:

New York Times

Jose Padilla, the American citizen who was held in military detention for more than three years as an enemy combatant, filed a lawsuit Friday against a former Justice Department lawyer who helped provide the legal justifications for what the suit says was Mr. Padilla’s unconstitutional confinement and “gross physical and psychological abuse.”

The lawyer, John C. Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote or helped prepare a series of legal memorandums on interrogations and the treatment of detainees after the Sept. 11 attacks.

A lawyer for Mr. Yoo, Eric M. George, called Mr. Padilla’s suit “a political diatribe” that “belongs, at best, in a journal, not before a federal court.”

Mr. Padilla, 37, was transferred from military custody to the criminal justice system in 2006, and in August he was convicted of terrorism-related charges in Miami. He awaits sentencing.

The new lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, seeks only one dollar in damages. “That’s what Padilla directed us to ask for,” said Jonathan M. Freiman, one of Mr. Padilla’s lawyers. “At bottom, this isn’t about money. It’s about right and wrong.”

I hope the son-of-a-bitch is hung out to dry by Padilla and his legal team. And wouldn't it be just grand if a memo from the President was discovered that directed Yoo to write those heinous legal opinions.