RE-HOODING JUSTICE
It’s bad. Very bad.
The Obama administration’s argument, the very idea that an administration headed by someone versed in Constitutional law would unabashedly support broad-brush and unilateral denial of access to the judicial system, figuratively deploying the new broom to sweep the same dirt under the old rug, the continuance of one-sided use of classification as both a means and an end, the upheaval and degradation visited on those seeking to air their case — it all stinks to the heavens.
…”This is the first real test of the authenticity of Obama’s commitment to reverse the abuses of executive power over the last eight years.” Today, the Obama administration failed that test — resoundingly and disgracefully….
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That the Obama DOJ — when faced with its first real test to determine what it intends to do in these areas (as opposed to engaging in symbolic rituals and issuing pretty words) — explicitly adopts exactly the Bush position is about as inauspicious a start in these areas as one can imagine.
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What this is clearly about is shielding the U.S. Government and Bush officials from any accountability. Worse, by keeping Bush’s secrecy architecture in place, it ensures that any future President — Obama or any other — can continue to operate behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy, with no transparency or accountability even for blatantly criminal acts.
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They’re embracing a theory that literally places government officials beyond the rule of law. No minimally honest person who criticized the Bush administration for relying on this instrument can defend the Obama administration for doing so here. Source
More:
…State secrecy should exist to protect the nation’s military and diplomatic secrets, and those are the parameters which have governed its use since the time the Constitution was adopted. But state secrecy must not be invoked to keep materials secret because they would be politically embarrassing or harmful to individual politicians. And even more clearly, state secrecy must never be invoked to conceal evidence of a crime.
[snip]
…Using state secrecy claims to cloak criminal conduct without any acknowledgment of the misconduct that occurred is a bad, even criminal, idea. It can only bring the government itself into disrepute and will serve to undermine the nation’s security and respect for state secrets. Source
Preventing truth from being openly weighed in the public commons allows liars, sneaks, deceivers, charlatans and hordes of assaulters of liberty unchallenged access and voice.
Slacking off in stages from despotism and imperialistic hubris is not an option. A break, a cold turkey stoppage, a renunciation by deed, is the only honorable path.
A path decidedly not taken today.
Update Feb. 11, 1:30 p.m.: Good on Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA).
Also, highly related (emphasis added):
As the entirety of the secreted evidence rests wholly on the previous administration, ye old scribe is doing a bit of head-scratching on that last bit, and hypothesizing that holdovers from or careerists under that woebegone group may be engaging in some classic CYA methodology.…”You, as commander in chief, are being denied access to material that would help prove that crimes have been committed by US personnel. This decision is being made by the very people who you command.”
It is understood US defence officials might have censored the evidence to protect the president from criminal liability or political embarrassment. Source
Follow-up Feb. 11, 6 p.m.: Trust must be earned, not dictated. There is no rational (much less attributable) rationalization for this monumental miscarriage. It must be set right. The massive rent in the fabric of the American constitutional system must be mended and defended. To do otherwise without a clear, concise, and directly accountable explanation and laying out of all the principles and arguments involved is unconscionably incorrect and demonstrably dangerous — a retrograde revolution from within, and a pointed spitting in the eye of and slapping a gag on every person who has so much as heard the words “liberty and justice for all.”
Update Feb. 12 8:15 a.m.: Working towards a necessity?
House and Senate committees yesterday introduced bills that would sharply curtail the government’s use of the “state secrets” privilege, a policy used by President Bush to argue that a lawsuit involving allegations of torture should be dismissed - and a position that the Obama administration has now adopted.[snip]
“The administration’s decision this week to adopt its predecessor’s argument that the state secret privilege requires the outright dismissal of a case challenging rendition to torture was a step in the wrong direction and a reminder that legislation is required to ensure meaningful review of the state secret privilege,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who is one of the House bill’s cosponsors.
Nadler said protecting sensitive information “is an important responsibility for any administration and requires that courts protect legitimate state secrets while preventing the premature and sweeping dismissal of entire cases.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said the Senate version of the bill “will help guide the courts to balance the government’s interests in secrecy with accountability and the rights of citizens to seek judicial redress” in cases of wrongdoing. The bill, he said, “does not restrict the government’s ability to assert the privilege in appropriate cases. In light of the pending cases where this privilege has been invoked, involving issues including torture, rendition and warrantless wiretapping, we can ill afford to delay consideration of this important legislation.” Source
More:
A President who seeks to aggrandize his own power through wildly expansive claims of executive authority ought to be vigorously criticized. But the ultimate responsibility to put a stop to that lies with the Congress (and the courts). More than anything else, it was the failure of the Congress to rein in the abuses of the Bush presidency (when they weren’t actively endorsing those abuses) that was the ultimate enabling force of the extremism and destruction of the last eight years. Source
