Obama government retreats to Bush-era state secrets dishonesty

Just how important is it that the United States, with the world's most powerful military and the world's most enduring democracy, engage in conduct overseas that would be patently illegal within its own borders? That question arose again yesterday, as it has repeatedly in the rather disturbingly slow dismantling of widely discredited George W. Bush-era policies, when the Obama administration invoked the state secrets doctrine in an effort to convince a federal judge in Washington to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the military of trying to kill a U.S. citizen in Yemen. According to the New York Times, the New Mexico-born citizen, Anwar Al-Awlaki, is living in Yemen and is associated with al-Qaida, the radical Islamic terrorist group blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. that killed thousands. His father, Nasser al-Awlaki, filed the lawsuit seeking an injunction to block the U.S. government from killing the son, the Times said. U.S. government lawyers completed a legal brief Friday contending the lawsuit should be dismissed because litigating the could result in the disclosure of confidential information -- the so-called state secrets -- and other grounds. The doctrine was invoked successfully numerous times during the last administration to short-circuit claims against the government for allegedly illegal activities in the war on terror. No one seriously questions whether the government has the right to keep secrets when disclosures would put innocent lives at risk. But that does not give the government the right to maintain secrecy when it wants merely to escape consequences for illegal activity. What we saw during the last administration, when the federal government eviscerated long-established constitutional principles to advance a dubious political agenda, should give everyone pause. There has to be a serious accounting. The Obama administration's most serious mistake so far was its refusal to review the previous government and to bring alleged lawbreakers to trial. Everything that happens now, including the Al-Awlaki case, is built upon that miscalculation. This time, the Times said, Obama-appointed Attorney General Eric Holder personally approved invoking the state-secrets defense. “It strains credulity to argue that our laws require the government to disclose to an active, operational terrorist any information about how, when and where we fight terrorism,” said Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman. That's logical, but only in the abstract, and it's a bad mistake to invoke it merely to justify other bad mistakes. If this is going to continue to be a government of laws, those laws are going to have to be enforced -- even if it means some well-known government officials will have to stand trial.

Big surprise -- no prosecutions in U.S. attorney firings

News out of Washington that the U.S. Justice Department has decided not to prosecute former Bush administration officials for improperly firing nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 is disheartening to Americans who believe the country needs to understand what went so terribly wrong when George W. Bush was president, but it is no shocker. The timidity with which the Obama administration has approached the question has not inspired any confidence in the new president's leadership -- in fact, the contrary is true. The breathtaking damage done to the basic law of the United States by the last administration and the acquiescence by the very officials who had taken solemn oaths to defend the Constitution demands action, not further timidity. The people of the United States have the right to have confidence in their government, not the persistent sense that their leaders are willing to sacrifice the country's founding principles to preserve their own lives of privilege. At the very least, the people should demand to know why civil liberties were curtailed, why the country's treasure was compromised by wars without end, why the White House was allowed to amass virtually unlimited power and why almost no one in office is talking about how to start putting things back to the way they should be. The legal system is a very good place to start this re-examination, especially if the White House is not willing or able to lead a process that will surely lead to limitations on presidential authority. President Obama should reject the decision by Attorney General Eric Holder not to prosecute former Bush administration officials in the U.S. attorneys case, as Cable News Network (CNN) reported, and rethink his earlier reluctance to pursue other officials. Obama seems destined to be a one-term president no matter what he does at this point; at least he can leave a legacy we will always remember and be proud of.

ACLU challenges government's no-fly list -- 10 years late

News that the American Civil Liberties Union had filed suit to challenge the federal government's "no-fly list" should be regarded as both good news and bad news for U.S. residents concerned about Washington's growing authority over their lives. That it has taken so many years to assemble a credible constitutional challenge to what assuredly was an immense power grab by federal authorities speaks quite loudly about the passivity of most Americans and their lack of involvement in governing their country. To be sure, the circumstances that led the feds to closely monitor airplane travel after the Sept. 11 attacks were unprecedented and outrageous. But the emergency that arguably justified the imposition of such a draconian regulatory regime -- barring U.S. citizens from traveling on airplanes based on possibly incorrect but still secret information -- has surely passed. And that it took a citizens group to mount that challenge, and not any of the array of federal agencies whose taxpayer-funded mission is to defend the U.S. Constitution, is nothing short of disgraceful. Even the lawsuit filed Wednesday tacitly accepts the legality of the restrictions, since it argues on behalf of 10 residents that the rules are unconstitutional because they do not permit people on the list to challenge their inclusion, according to the Reuters international news service. An ACLU lawyer told Reuters that the lawsuit was the first filed on behalf of legal U.S. residents challenging the no-fly list system. A lawsuit by a non-citizen seeking to get removed from the list is still pending, Reuters said. "The Constitution does not permit such a fundamental deprivation of rights to be carried out under a veil of secrecy and in the absence of even rudimentary process," the suit filed Wednesday says. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, Ore., and names Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Timothy Healy, director of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, Reuters said.

European nations agree to take Guantanamo inmates, AG says

Well, it's looking as if U.S. President Barack Obama's 'apology tour' around Europe last month is beginning to pay dividends. At a stop in Berlin on his own three-day tour of Europe, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that he was "pleasantly surprised" that some European allies were willing to some accept terror suspects when the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, closes in January, according to the Washington Post newspaper. "I know that Europe did not open Guantanamo and that in fact a great many on this continent opposed it," Holder said. "To close Guantanamo, we must all make sacrifices, and we must all be willing to make unpopular choices." To be sure, the Europeans have been slow to offer to accept any of the prisoners, who were captured and held, some for years, in the U.S.-sponsored war on terror that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Many European countries, notably France, opposed the war on terror. Holder said the United States was conducting a review of all cases involving the 241 prisoners still held at Guantanamo and would be making formal requests to European nations about accepting specific inmates who are not considered security risks. Obama has put Holder, the first African American Attorney General in U.S. history, in charge of closing the prison, the Post said. While only England has accepted even one prisoner so far and France is only believed to be committed to resettling one Guantanamo inmate, U.S. officials are said to believe that European nations could eventually take as many as 60 suspects. Portugal, Ireland, Switzerland, Spain and Lithuania have also offered to resettle inmates, the Post said.