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Obama’s Impossible Position
Balloon Juice —
... the State Secrets privilege in a torture case provides the first tangible example. The only justifiable decision is to revoke the Bush DoJ’s ridiculous abuse of the State Secrets privilege. However, doing so would almost certainly compel a wider investigation and likely criminal charges against former government officials. To avoid being seen as the President who put his last administration on trial Obama he has to resort to the exact same heinous abuses of power that made the Bush DoJ into a national disgrace. ...
Unexpected Headline: Obama Backs Bush On Rendition Case, Secrecy
Swampland —
... The liberal legal scold Glenn Greenwald calls this a 180-degree reversal from Obama's campaign rhetoric. And he lays out a strong case. As he notes, the ...
Hullabaloo — ... Greenwald is justifiably up in arms about the gawd awful misunderstanding of the issue surrounding theObama administration's invocation of state secrets yesterday. It's hard to believe that people are defending something which we have all been railing about for years, and even worse that they are so crudely misrepresenting exactly what it is that the DOJ did yesterday. If there is any confusion, I urge you to read Glenn's post today. The simple fact is that the Obama administration has preserved for itself the power to block any lawsuit it chooses, a power created out of ...
Turn and face the strange
The Sideshow —
... Rolling Stone journalist Peter Biskind and scientist Michio Kaku, it claims that a nuclear weapon can be made 'using a bicycle pump' and with liquid uranium 'poured into a bucket and swung round'." This is the state secret the Obama administration wants hidden. Here's that short Stiglitz interview from TPM. (Also: Time to stop believing in President Ninja.) Impossible? No, it's not really impossible to do the right thing. Glenn Greenwald on The 180-degree reversal of Obama's State Secrets position (following up from here), and on the ...
Dissecting Leftism — ... The 180-degree reversal of Obama's State Secrets position : "To underscore just what a complete reversal the Obama DOJ's conduct is, consider what Seante Democrats were saying for the last several years. In early 2008, Sens. Kennedy and Leahy, along with Sen. Arlen Specter, sponsored the State Secrets Protection Act. It had numerous co-sponsors, including Joe Biden. In April, 2008, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill, with all Committee Democrats voting for it, along with Specter. The scheme of restrictions imposed on the privilege by that bill was the consensus ...
More Of The Same
Congress Blog —
... the global program (in fact, it seems the ONLY place extraordinary rendition isn’t being talked about is where it most cries out for review- in American courts of law). And Letter made this assertion in spite of the fact that President Obama ran on a platform that promised more transparency in government and called the Bush administration abuse of the state secrets privilege a “ problem .” The five men who are plaintiffs in our lawsuit against Jeppesen were kidnapped, flown to CIA black sites and other overseas locations, and tortured. Two of them have since been released ...
Access Journalism — Business As Usual?
Firedoglake —
... Glenn Greenwald has been rightfully indignant about the Obama DoJ's use of Bush's "state secrets" argument to cover up charges of rendition and torture. The ...
Daniel Firger: What Obama Should Do About State Secrets
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
Monday's hearing in the Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan "extraordinary rendition" lawsuit was a rude awakening for civil libertarians expecting the Obama/Holder Justice Department to make a clean break from Bush era policies on secrecy.
Most lefty commentators greeted the news that DOJ will (at least for the time being) maintain the Bush administration's position on the state secrets privilege with some mixture of disappointment, dismay, and alarm, and with good reason. Even the most charitable reading of why the ...
Impressed, and Disappointed
Comments from Left Field —
Earlier today, I wrote about how impressed I am with Barack Obama as president, despite the fact that he has disappointed me in some areas.
Well, this is one of those areas in which his actions not only disappoint and anger me, but mystify me as well:
President Barack Obama invoked “state secrets” to prevent a court from reviewing the legality of the National Security Agency’s warantless wiretapping program, moving late Friday to have a lawsuit that challenged the program dismissed.
The move — which holds that information surrounding the massive eavesdropping program should ...
Obama Administration Has No Comment on State Secrets Legislation
Daily Kos —
... The legislation — which represented the consensus view of the Democratic Party a year ago — would drastically limit use of the state secrets privilege, which is the invocation of national security to justify government secrecy and get anti-government lawsuits tossed out of court. The bill was ...
Biden Won't Comment On State Secrets Law He Once Co-Sponsored
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed —
The Vice President's office is declining to weigh in on a bill that would restrict use of the "state secrets privilege" by the Department of Justice, despite the fact that, as a senator, Joe Biden co-sponsored that very piece of legislation.
"No comment on this from here," emailed Jay Carney, the vice president's communications director, when asked for Biden's position on a bill that would limit DOJ's ability to dismiss cases against government officials involved in warrantless wiretapping on grounds that sensitive information would be publicized.
The silence from the Vice President's office comes as the White House, too, has refused to ...
Obama's Latest Effort to Conceal Evidence of Bush Era Crimes
Commondreams.org Views —
It's difficult to react much to Obama's complete reversal today of his own prior decision to release photographs depicting extreme detainee abuse by the United States. He's left no doubt that this is what he does: ever since he was inaugurated, Obama has taken one extreme step after the next to keep concealed both the details and the evidence of Bush's crimes, including rendition , torture and warrantless eavesdropping . The ACLU's Amrit Singh -- who litigated the thus-far-successful FOIA lawsuit to compel disclosure of these photographs -- is exactly right: The reversal is another indication of a continuance of the Bush ...
Obushma Watch: Torture Photo Flip Flop and Reactions Division
Hit & Run —
Glenn Greenwald at Salon, the most delightfully angry man on America's progressive left these days, checks out Obama's tortuous explanations and flipflops on torture photos and accountability for Bush-era crimes. The whole thing is a hoot; here are some highlights. It's difficult to react much to Obama's complete reversal today of his own prior decision to release photographs depicting extreme detainee abuse by the United States. He's left no doubt that this is what he does: ever since he was inaugurated, Obama has taken one extreme step after the next to keep concealed both the details and ...
ABC News' Interview with Lakhdar Boumediene and Our Current Policies
Commondreams.org Views —
Lakhdar Boumediene is an Algerian (and Bosnian citizen) who, while living in Bosnia and working for the International Red Crescent, was arrested by the Bosnian government (at the behest of the Bush administration) shortly after 9/11 on charges of plotting to blow up a U.S. and British embassy, but was then quickly cleared by Bosnian courts of any wrongdoing and ordered released. But as he was about to be released -- in January, 2002 -- he was abducted by the U.S. military inside Bosnia and shipped to Guantanamo, where he remained without charges for the next almost 8 years , and was clearly tortured. [image] ...
Space Rocks Now Classified
Newshoggers.com —
By Steve Hynd
Can liberals, lefties, progressives and Democrats all be honest and admit we'd have howled in outrrage about overly zealous police-state secrecy if this had been done during the Bush years? (H/t Kat):
For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth's atmosphere – but no longer.
A recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that observations by hush-hush government spacecraft of incoming bolides and fireballs are classified secret and are not to be released, SPACE.com has learned. ...
Obama and Transparency: Judge for Yourself
Commondreams.org Views —
(updated below)"My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government" -- Barack Obama, January 28, 2009 Promising "a new era of openness in our country," President Obama [said]: "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency" -- CNN, January 21, 2009 "A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency . As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, 'sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.' In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which encourages accountability through transparency, is the most prominent expression of a profound ...
Obama's Latest Use of 'Secrecy' to Shield Presidential Lawbreaking
Commondreams.org Views —
The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and most radical version of the "state secrets" privilege -- which previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal Democrats (when used by Bush/Cheney) -- to attempt to block courts from ruling on the legality of the government's domestic surveillance activities. Obama did so again this past Friday -- just six weeks after the DOJ announced voluntary new internal guidelines which, it insisted, would prevent abuses of the state secrets privilege. Instead -- as predicted -- the DOJ continues to embrace the very same "state secrets" theories of the ...
Obama Admin Asserts State Secrets Privilege in NSA Spying Case
Open Left - Quick Hits's RSS Feed —
From Glenn Greenwald at Salon:
The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and most radical version of the "state secrets" privilege -- which previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal Democrats (when used by Bush/Cheney) -- to attempt to block courts from ruling on the legality of the government's domestic surveillance activities. Obama did so again this past Friday -- just six weeks after the DOJ announced voluntary new internal guidelines which, it insisted, would prevent abuses of the state secrets privilege. Instead -- as predicted -- the DOJ continues to ...
