the change we deserve, but aren't getting yet

[sophiaserpentia]

Glenn Greenwald on yesterday's court hearing, in which the Obama Administration upheld -- in apparent contradiction to a campaign promise -- the Bush Administration policy of demanding that cases be thrown out of court in order to protect "state secrets" from being revealed.

Nobody -- not the ACLU or anyone else -- argues that the State Secrets privilege is inherently invalid. Nobody contests that there is such a thing as a legitimate state secret. Nobody believes that Obama should declassify every last secret and never classify anything else ever again. Nor does anyone even assert that this particular lawsuit clearly involves no specific documents or portions of documents that might be legitimately subject to the privilege. Those are all transparent, moronic strawmen advanced by people who have no idea what they're talking about.

What was abusive and dangerous about the Bush administration's version of the States Secret privilege -- just as the Obama/Biden campaign pointed out -- was that it was used not (as originally intended) to argue that specific pieces of evidence or documents were secret and therefore shouldn't be allowed in a court case, but instead, to compel dismissal of entire lawsuits in advance based on the claim that any judicial adjudication of even the most illegal secret government programs would harm national security. That is the theory that caused the bulk of the controversy when used by the Bush DOJ -- because it shields entire government programs from any judicial scrutiny -- and it is that exact version of the privilege that the Obama DOJ yesterday expressly advocated (and, by implication, sought to preserve for all Presidents, including Obama).

ETA. I should probably include a little bit about the case itself. Five plaintiffs have filed suit against a subsidiary for Boeing, alleging that the aircraft company assisted the CIA in carrying out of extraordinary renditions (otherwise known as "kidnappings") whereby they were imprisoned in various countries such as Egypt and Morocco, where they were tortured.

And by tortured, i don't mean and waterboarding and other techniques we have been debating in America whether or not they are "really" torture, but bone-breaking and genital-slicing and so on.

The Ninth Circuit panel, stunned by what they were hearing, asked twice if the change in administration had produced a difference of opinion on the subject.