Obama administration defending Bush secrets

[Red Dawn]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: spidey07
I honestly believe that once he got access to intelligence and information the previous president had Obama had a "holy shit, so that's why Bush was doing what he was doing. I was wrong." moment.

This is the moment! The moment where his eyes are opened.

This would explain a good bit.

Either that or he saw that if the truth got out it would create even more trouble than it's worth, at least at this time.

 

[cumhail]

I see this is as nothing more, nor less, than yet another example of how little difference there is between two sides. The only time they even pretend to put the nation's interests ahead of their own and their parties' is when they're running for office or drumming up support for a pet cause.

 

[palehorse]

I called this like Babe Ruth... many many many moons ago! Which is another reason why I voted for Obama...

 

[chess9]

Originally posted by: Evan
Frankly, it's a sad and terrible freaking day if he's really going to withhold the details of those wiretaps. There's operational and analytical secrets that have justifiable state secrets protection, but the full extent of the NSA wiretapping must be known. We've already heard too many former NSA employees reveal horribly unjustified surveillance of U.S. citizens. Let's hope they were isolated and will be locked out forever sometime soon. I don't think we're like the Chinese, who are comfortable with gov't surveillance online for arbitrary reasons.

Yes, exactly, and the state secrets defense is totally bogus. They need another, narrower rationale for withholding information from the public.

The idea that Obama has had an 'AHA' moment is utterly laughable. They simply have not been in office long enough to make up their minds exactly which approach they are going to use instead of the state secrets defense, and for the FOIA requests in particular.

Usage of the state secrets defense is known for it's strong proclivity for protecting politicians, bungling, and gross governmental stupidity, not real state secrets. LOL. We may have 5 state secrets we need to keep.....The rest is known.

I agree with the ACLU however that this start is not good. They are way behind the curve, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for a few more months.

-Robert

 

[Lemon law]

This entire thread suffers from a common delusion. Eric Holder, Obama's choice for AG is newly sworn in and has yet to really get his hands on the reins of power. And before Holder can do much of anything, he must appoint his own team. And once he has his top people in place, it will take quite a few weeks for them to realign the people who get things done and set the day to day agenda of the Justice Department.

Right now, all this thread is doing is complaining about the policies still set by the remnants of the Gonzales and Mukasey Justice Department running on auto pilot.

And given the sensitivity over the illegal and blatantly criminal policies allowed to flourish by Gonzales, its probably best if Holder really does the research on the complete record of that illegal past, before making that 180 degree turn away large about face clean break from the past. Rather than just easing away in a long series of small steps.

In a month or two we will know something about new Justice Department policies, right now, too many suffer from both a lack of patience and complete denial about how things get done in the real world.