Hey, It's Just The Rule Of Law
by Josh Orton, Mon Apr 13, 2009 at 09:54:12 AM EDT
Not great:
The White House is declining to say whether the Obama administration will support legislation introduced by Senate Democrats that would roll back the use of the "state secrets privilege," one of Bush's most controversial legal tools.The White House's silence on the bill will give more fodder to critics who charge that Obama has broken a campaign promise to dramatically scale back use of the Bush legal maneuver and wants the latitude to use it himself. It also sets up a potential showdown with Senate Dems who continue to view the legislation as crucial to rolling back Bush-era abuses.
The Obama DOJ's own use (expansion?) of the state secrets privilege was probably our first hint that the White House wouldn't support this bill.
But as Sargent points out, the legislation previously had the support of then-Senators Biden and Clinton.
There's an unfortunate pattern developing here: dense, hard-to-communicate constitutional issues like warrantless wiretapping and habeus corpus are treated as politically pliable - i.e. there's an expectation in Washington that a change in position on these things won't result in much political complication. Time will tell, I suppose.
Tags: Barack Obama, State Secrets Privilege (all tags)
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