One of the cases involves the lawyers for a Saudi charity, whose privileged communications were intercepted in 2004. After learning of a classified document which would help their case, the lawyers asked to have the document entered into evidence. The Justice Department under both Obama and Bush have tried to keep that document hidden.
Earlier this year, Walker allowed lawyers in the case to view the document. The public will probably never see it.
Another suit, McMurray v. Verizon Communications, argues that the NSA under the Bush administration initiated Project Groundbreaker months before the 9/11 attacks. That project was to have used AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth to spy on calls made American citizens. Bellsouth denies that it was ever contacted by the NSA; Verizon refuses to confirm or deny (which means they probably did).
On Marcy's blog, bmaz offers the latest on these cases:
Same old song, same old dance. Barack Obama avowed he was a man that believed in the sanctity of the Constitution, the rights of citizens and in transparency of the Executive. Obama would be the agent of change from Bush/Cheney. Except, now that he has taken office, that is all no longer operative. As Glenn Geenwald has noted, the Obama Administration has proven itself just as cravenly addicted to secrecy, imperial executive power and willingness to strip its citizens of their rights under the Constitution, and its Bill of Rights, as Bush and Cheney.What's odd about all this is that the Obama administration has been very good about releasing documents demonstrating the Bush administration's utter disregard for the Constitution in these areas. Greenwald does an excellent job of summarizing the newly-released records.
Yet the Obamites seem intent on committing the same sins. In essence, they are saying: "Wasn't it awful, what those Bush people did? Now let's do the same things. But we'll have our lawyers come up with slightly different legal justifications. That makes it all better!"
3 comments:
In some instances they just change the names or terms they use but otherwise leave the policy untouched.
What's odd about all this...
Not very odd, to my mind: turning in someone else for a given crime to divert suspicion away from your commission of the same type of crime is a highly effective tactic (i.e. "I don't believe it, that must be a lie, he hates people who do that, just look at what he's done!").
That's why closeted Republicans rail against gays.
Sergei Rostov
"But we'll have our lawyers come up with slightly different legal justifications."
That was my reaction. I actually did a double take. Same thing, just different words.
Fran
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