Not quite getting it

If you're interested in the third rate unconstitutional shenanigans our favorite ex-President and his posse of crooks got us into, well the Obama Administration has gone to the trouble of releasing nine documents that shed light on their malfeasance. Revealing is how quickly the Bush Administration saw September 11th as an opportunity to disabuse themselves of the quaint notions of legality and ethics. You couldn't have boiled an egg in the time the towers fell until they decided warrantless wiretapping was a solid plan. But don't take my word for it.

The Obama administration threw open the curtain on years of Bush-era secrets Monday, revealing anti-terror memos that claimed exceptional search-and-seizure powers and divulging that the CIA destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of interrogations and other treatment of terror suspects.

The Justice Department released nine legal opinions showing that, following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration determined that certain constitutional rights would not apply during the coming fight. Within two weeks, government lawyers were already discussing ways to wiretap U.S. conversations without warrants.
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"Too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech a few hours before the documents were released. "Not only is that school of thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it does more harm than good."

While the Obama Administration is to be somewhat commended for releasing these documents they don't really seem to be getting it. Because while they are quick to shed light on some of the grossly illegal tactic of Bush, they're quick to embrace other unseemly ones. Like trying to block a judicial ruling on warrantless wiretapping and embracing the notion that no court evidently has the power to order the use of classified documents in a judicial process, only the President does. That would be the work of the same Eric Holder so nobly spouting off about doing more harm than good and the misguided view of a zero-sum battle.

The only real way that the unabashed declaration of secrecy and executive power by the Bush Administration wasn't viewed as a bigger threat is because the whole torture and illegal spying things were still hanging above it, sucking up the outrage. But now that those last two seem to be gone, it's still a pretty major deal that the Obama DOJ and White House still want to cling on to all the secrecy. It was a problem when Bush did it, it's a problem when you do it too Barry. You didn't get elected to dump the really bad stuff but keep the kinda bad stuff, you got elected to dump it all. To tout the release of documents as some sort of blow against the criminality and secrecy of the previous administration while at the same time heading to court and claiming the exact same secrecy privileges is...well, gutless.

You know if you voted for him and bought into the whole hope and change thing, this (and his venture into the 'state secrets' obfuscation) should really bother you. By which I mean piss you off.