Is Obama Embracing the Lawless, Omnipotent Executive?
by Glenn Greenwald
by
Glenn Greenwald
 As
I detailed
over the weekend, the Obama administration – in the case brought
by two American lawyers and their charity-client claiming that their
conversations were illegally intercepted by the Bush administration
– has announced that it intends to try to appeal, yet again,
in order to prevent the court from hearing the lawsuit. On Friday,
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Obama's request to stay
the District Judge's Order, which had held that it will review a
classified document that the plaintiffs claim proves they were subjected
to the illegal eavesdropping (thus conferring standing on the plaintiffs
to challenge the legality of Bush's NSA program), and also ordered
the Obama administration to provide security clearances to the plaintiffs'
lawyers so that they could review the document as well. The Obama
DOJ immediately announced they intend to try to appeal again –
the third time, since Obama's Inauguration, that the Obama DOJ will
try to argue before a court that the case should not heard at all.
In the meantime,
though, the Obama DOJ is now refusing to comply with the Judge's
order, actually arguing to the court that only the President
can decide whether classified information can be used in a court
proceeding, and that courts have no power to make such decisions.
Here is the remarkable description of Obama's actions by
The San Francisco Chronicle's Bob Egelko:
Feds defy
judge's order in Islamic group case
A federal
appeals court rejected the Obama administration's attempt Friday
to stop a judge in San Francisco from reviewing a challenge to
the wiretapping program ordered by former President George W.
Bush.
Hours later,
President Obama's Justice Department filed papers that appeared
to defy the judge's order to allow lawyers for an Islamic
organization to see a classified surveillance document at the
heart of the case. The department said the judge had no power
to enforce such an order.
Read
the rest of the article
|
