Obama to Bush: your secrets are safe with me (especially the ones about torture)

Michael Balter 2/11/2009 11:59:00 AM Politics
No one can touch Glenn Greenwald when it comes to exposing not only the unconstitutional actions of the U.S. government but the complicity of those journalists who provide cover for the officials who carry them out. So I hope I won't be considered a lazy blogger if I turn you over to Glenn and his highly detailed analysis of the Obama administration's continuing to use the state secrets argument to prevent a case concerning torture of detainees to move forward in Federal court. Especially important is Greenwald's demolition of the excuses that Obama's apologists have used to try to paper over and justify this outrageous decision. And as a constitutional lawyer, he is the perfect person to do it.

Glenn's Salon piece also cites the New York Times' editorial on this subject today, entitled "Continuity of the Wrong Kind," which is equally scathing:

The Obama administration failed — miserably — the first test of its commitment to ditching the extravagant legal claims used by the Bush administration to try to impose blanket secrecy on anti-terrorism policies and avoid accountability for serial abuses of the law.

Is that clear enough for everyone? It would have been worse with McCain, sure, and I am willing to cut Obama some slack on certain issues, but this goes too far--way too far.

More on this topic. From Dahlia Lithwick at Slate.

Do we all have the capacity for inhuman cruelty? An excellent post by Liliana Segura about the meaning of Stanley Milgram's famous electric shock experiments and their more recent replication by Jerry Burger at Santa Clara University. Please give it a read (with thanks to PG for the link.)
Michael Balter

Posted by Michael Balter

I have been a working journalist for more than 40 years, beginning in Los Angeles as an investigative reporter and then in Paris as a travel, food, and science writer. For more than 20 years I have covered anthropology and archaeology writer for Science, Audubon, Scientific American, SAPIENS, and other publications. I have also covered sexual misconduct for The Verge, Scientific American, and others; I write about mental health, especially schizophrenia; and I engage in occasional media criticism. I returned to the USA in October 2017 after 30 years in Paris, and now live in the New York City area, where I currently teach journalism at City College of New York (I previously taught journalism at Boston University and New York University.) For more about me and what I do, copies of my articles, information about my book, and other goodies, please visit MY WEB SITE

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1 Comments

Richard Parker said…
Combined with the threat in the UK Binyamin Mohammed case, that 'Intelligence help will be withdrawn' if you publish anything, this proves that the rats are still around, and winning.
February 11, 2009 at 10:13 PM
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