Sunday, November 1, 2009

This Trick is No Treat.



Obama's Latest Use of 'Secrecy' to Shield Presidential Lawbreaking

What was once depicted as a grave act of lawlessness -- Bush's NSA program -- is now deemed a vital state secret.



by Glenn Greenwald


Published on Sunday, November 1, 2009 by Salon.com


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 Bush administration -- which Democrats generally and Barack Obama specifically once vehemently condemned -- and is doing so in order literally to shield the President from judicial review or accountability when he is accused of breaking the law……



Read the whole article at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/01-0



sj

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