On his way out the door, John Ashcroft calls out judges for judging. “‘The danger I see here is that intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations in these critical areas can put at risk the very security of our nation in a time of war,’ Ashcroft said.” Well, maybe now that he’s got some time on his hands, perhaps someone can explain to him that whole checks-and-balances thing.
Tag: State Secrets
Poker-faced Liars.
“Editors: Can you show us your cards? Cheney: Sure. One of them’s a six.” By way of Value Judgment, experience the tribulations of poker with Dick Cheney. “Cheney: We will show you our cards after we have collected the pot. It is important that things be done in this order, otherwise the foundation of our entire poker game will be destroyed.” Update: In semi-related news, the Supreme Court bails out Cheney 7-2 on the energy task force documents, although they also decided to punt the case back to a lower court. Hmmm.
Keeping Secrets, Keeping Suspects.
Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick reports in on the Bush administration’s twin attempts before the Supreme Court to lock up US citizens and hide their shady energy deals indefinitely. Update: The Times and Post weigh in as well.
Now for ruin, and a red dawn.
It looks like the worst-case scenario outlined by Alternet yesterday is coming about sooner than expected. Senator Orrin Hatch leads a GOP charge to eliminate the sunset provisions in the Patriot Act, thus making permanent the sweeping antiterrorism provisions of the first bill and setting the stage for PATRIOT II. Let’s hope Hatch doesn’t have the votes.
Fleeing from History.
Speaking of silence and smokescreens, Dubya chose the biggest night of fighting yet to rewrite the disclosure rules for government documents, gutting Clinton administration policies that facilitated the declassification of papers. One could argue that Dubya is merely trying to keep WMD knowledge out of the hands of America’s enemies, but given his track record on the Reagan papers, the President doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on. There’s a lot of information out there that might “impair relations between the United States and a foreign government,” and most of it has very little to do with WMDs. And, sadly, this looks to be only the first of many such wartime night massacres.
Something up their sleeve…
Citing Cheney’s energy meetings, Ashcroft’s FOIA directives, the holding of the (Iran-Contra explaining?) Reagan papers, and a host of other Dubya decisions that seem unnecessarily marked private, the NY Times (quoting Alan Brinkley) finds the Bush fils administration the most secretive in American history. But whatever would they have to hide?
Freedom of Disinformation.
Also courtesy of Looka, John Ashcroft is encouraging Justice Department lawyers to evade — or break — the Freedom of Information Act whenever possible. How frighteningly typical of our Attorney General…you gotta wonder at this point if he dresses up like Judge Dredd when nobody’s looking.