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Senate Proposal To Clarify 'State Secrets' Doctrine
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and other lawmakers are pushing legislation to limit the power of the state secrets doctrine in blocking lawsuits. The doctrine has been used as a 'get out of jail free' card in cases like the EFF's warrantless wiretapping lawsuit. This new legislation would make it harder for the administration to invoke the doctrine, and provide new allowances, such as using attorneys with security clearances to enable the lawsuits to go forward even when the issue is appropriately raised." Update: 04/28 16:58 GMT by KD : The New Yorker is running a detailed piece, State Secrets, by Patrick Radden Keefe, about how the use of the state secrets doctrine is playing out in one particular case.
This administration will veto this faster than you can blink.
Is anybody gullible enough to believe that Bush would actually sign a bill that could hold his administration responsible for its crimes?
Well, remember that Bush is on his way out anyway. If a Democrat gets elected President, then their administration will be held to a higher standard of accountability through this legislation. So who knows? There's a tiny (tiny) possibility that Bush could conceivably sign such legislation just before he leaves office. He's already gotten away with murder (quite literally).
The thing is, what would you have Congress and the courts do, anyway? The time for action has long passed, and it's useless to now look back in hindsight and accuse them of playing along. Their power to enact change comes from their respective constituencies, and when the people were shaking in their boots over 9/11, that's when the administration struck.
So yeah, the legislation is likely to fail. Yeah, it's probably dead in the water, and as such it's just more politics as usual. But again, what would you have them do? They've been neutered and cowed into submission by a group of very rich and powerful white men and their cronies, who have trampled upon our Constitution with impunity.
I say that, even as a piece of political theatre, the introduction of this piece of legislation is more useful than not having introduced it. Granted it's too little to late to make any REAL difference. But for as low as our nation's so-called "elected" officals have sunk, lip service is all we can get right now.
This seems so obvious; did no one had (the courage to have) that idea before?
That said, "special attorneys" with security clearence are not that good of a solution if they are a small group and no one has to right to check on what they did.
Plus, I would hate to see a whole "secret justice" aside from the normal one. What I mean is that cogress rejected the idea of "secret laws" a while ago, and I wouldn't want the governement to use "secret attorneys" as a way to push that idea again.
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
It's about time.
I wouldn't mind seeing the whole concept of "state secret" repudiated. It really has no place in a free society.
If we really have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people what gives some part of that government the right to keep secrets from every other part, including the parts that are supposed to be watching over them and keeping them in check? The very notion should set warning bells off from here to next Tuesday.
Think about it? In what other context would that sort of inversion of ultimate authority be considered even remotely reasonable? If you told your boss that you were working on a project that was so secret you couldn't tell them about it, or any of your co-workers, including accounting, HR, the legal department, and it involved you needing to have building security look the other way while you took things in and out of the building...how long do you think you'd be employed?
-- MarkusQ
After all our Dear Leader has told numerous times, the state secrets is just.. a state secret.
I mean even the president can't divulge state secrets because they are a state secret. Next thing you know those "Representatives" will claim they can hold the president accountable for lying, breaking the law, and violating his oath of office. One of the rights of the president is to mislead the enemy by planting false information. If that is called as lying, then the congress needs to have its head examined. Misleading is not lying. After all i didn't say 'i did not have sex with that woman'. And which congressman is truthful?
If these jokers keep pushing for this legislation, then i would have to talk to cheney in "accidently" releasing some NSA videotapes and audio records of some 'spitzer-like' moments of some of our senators.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
This is a privilege that should never have existed. Literally from the case that established it the privilege has been consistently abused. Anything that can be done to reduce or eliminate its use should be done.
If the government truly has secret information that bears on the case, they should have two choices. The first is to follow established legal procedures to present the information off the official record for the judge to make a decision on. And the second is to lose the case.
But they should not have the right to say, "You'll have to trust that we could defend ourselves if we could tell you the full story, but we can't for national security reasons." Because giving them that right gives them the ability to wave a "get out of jail free" card whenever it is convenient. And it is convenient far, far more often than it is true.
Why not just do what they usually do---sign it now and issue a signing statement that says it doesn't apply to the Bush administration.... :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Basically, invoking the privilege is fine, but it should mean the government basically loses the case automatically.
So, you can't see anything that President Obama, as he's re-sending Secretary Of State Carter back to have another friendly sit-down with Hamas (who just endorsed Obama - fabulous!), might have a need to keep secret... AND which should be that way? Or should his political opponents be able to sue him for political reasons, and automatically "win" (and what? get whatever they want?) because if Obama were to divulge secret info or methods as used in pursuit of his foreign policy or defense chores he'd be risking lives or breaking promises made to other governments? Just think through the consequences of making anyone who decides to file a suit automatically win if the Commander In Chief doesn't cave in and dole out things that it's foolish to divulge. The Dems need to look past their pathological Bush hatred and consider that they may not like their own guy being unable to support and protect the necessarily covert things that that office's duties require.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If a Democrat gets elected President, then their administration will be held to a higher standard of accountability through this legislation.
If a Democrat gets elected President, you can guarantee they'll be held to a higher standard of accountability, period. In particular, all the Republicans who have been giving Bush a free pass pretty much ever since he took office will be all over anything Obama or Clinton does that even appears the least bit improper. Especially if it's Clinton -- their paranoia about that family knows no bounds. "B-b-but he lied about a blow job! That's the worstest thing any President has ever done EVAR!"
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It stopped being cool to spell things with a K replacing a C in like, 1995. Stop.
You're one of those people who spells Microsoft as Micro$oft too, aren't you?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I agree. If the House and Senate feel that what the Executive is doing is clearly wrong, they have a Constitutional remedy for that. Doing anything less is, in the first place, an unpleasant moral compromise on their part, and in the second, a means of rendering the process they seek to stop legitimate.
They should pass a law, a constitutional amendment, or get the Supreme Court to rule, to the effect that the most an officer or agent of the government can do in the name of state secrecy under congressional testimony is to require a closed session for the duration of the testimony (afterwards, it will be for the Senators and Representatives to decide what to reveal, either through a resolution or through the Congressional Record. Failure to testify, or lying to the committee or chamber that is investigating, should be a severe federal crime whose penalties include stiff prison sentences, fines, and perpetual, irrevocable ineligibility for government employment.
But they won't do this, because they are all a bunch of pansies who shrink from a fight, even over serious issues of governance. Somewhere, Abraham Lincoln is weeping.
There are things that Obama may not want to be public knowledge while they're going on (Hey guys, here's the President's itinerary, here's where he'll be on the plane, he'll be in this car in the motorcade, etc), but there's nothing that should be witheld from Congress. Period, end of story. Saying you can't trust Congress to do the right thing with sensitive information is basically a repudiation of democracy.
I mean even the president can't divulge state secrets* because they are a state secret. * Except for in extreme circumstances, such as needing to discredit an ambassador who exposes the lies behind your justification for war. Or when needed to gain political advantage during an election.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Unless you're Scooter Libby. That was just for shock value, the Libby thing was pretty much crap.
But honestly, here's how that sounds in my head when you say things like that:
Bush lied and people died... but they were mostly our teen to twenty-year-old boys and girls in the sandbox, not to mention the tens of thousands that are coming back without arms, legs, or worse.
Clinton lied, babies died because for a while there we couldn't think of a blowjob without Linda Tripp's face. Then Viagra was invented.
You are exactly right, it was perjury... but I'd rather have that, even with Linda Tripp's face etched into my psyche, than to hobble/kill a generation.
I never voted for Clinton because I think a guy who's family can't trust him shouldn't be trusted to run the country. However, from now on, I think it only fair that any politician you personally vote for should be called to Congress, and asked if they masturbate. If they say no, they don't, they should go to jail, and if they say yes, they do, they should be required to describe explicit details on TV. You know... because it's just not right to commit perjury.
And obviously, you should be up in arms about Bush pardoning Libby. Let me guess... your not!
There are two kinds of people who still support Bush Jr. The religious right, who I strongly feel are harming the world through their politics, and glass eaters. Glass eaters (from either party) have drunk the Kool-Aid, and are incapable of even thinking badly of any sitting president from their party. From your ridiculous belief stated above, I'm putting you in the glass-eater category.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Having Kennedy(or for that matter any of the senate or house)working on this kind of legislation is kinda like having an arsonist driving the fire truck ,isn't it?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I fear, it was much more disturbing. I firmly believe that G.W.Bush and his administration didn't intend to lie to us, at least not about the single fact they were sure to be true. I rather think they were so convinced that there were WMDs in Iraq, and that al Qaeda was somehow the fifth platoon of Saddam Hussein, that they saw a necessity to reveal those dark and hidden plans with all means, even with deceit and lies. I think they thought that the end was justifying the means, and that somehow the truth at the end was making them holy again.
I had always that eerie feeling to be in one of those criminal novels where the lonely private eye is convinced that Person A is the murderer, even though all evidence points to Person B or even suggests suicide. And then the lonely eye tries to trick everyone (by planting false evidence or by lying to police men or whatever) into finally giving him access to Person A's privatest and intimest places to finally find that evidence to finally prove Person A's guilt.
The problem was twofold:
1) The president of the United States is no lonely private eye. He is the single most powerful military commander of the world. So when he screws up because his gut feeling is misleading him, then he screws up really big time. But he never asked himself: What if we are all wrong? Everyone actually asking this or at least asking for some evidence was just a hindrance for him to reveal the truth he was so strongly believing in. And he and his administration felt justified to remove those road blocks at all cost, even at the price of the Constitution.
2) The administration got it terribly wrong. There was no hidden truth to reveal. It was exactly as it seemed at the beginning: al Qaeda is fundamentalist network, and Saddam Hussein was a grotesk dictator. And both were detesting and mistrusting each other: For al Qaeda Iraq was much too secular, and for Saddam Bin Ladin was too fundamentalist, too independent to be controlled and thus a danger to Saddam's own powers. And the WMDs were really destroyed and all attempts to restart the weapon program were thwarted by the inspectors, by the embargo, and by the normal incompetence of a dictatorial bureaucracy. The zigzagging was just to keep some street cred with the neighbours, and making them think there would be at least some military power left with the local bully, so they wouldn't start the war.
Saddam probably wasn't expecting the world greatest power to be so naive and to fall for his stunt. In the end his little deceitment and the stubborn naivety paired with a feeling of a higher mission of a bunch of hillbillies in power was costing at least the life of 30.000 Iraqi soldiers and 4000 U.S. soldiers. It put Iraq in the most serious political instability since World War I when the Turkish Empire was dying, and this instability killed another 250.000 Iraqis. So the last five years were as devastating to the Iraqis as the 30 years of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship before.
the consent of the governed
Right! And it is with that consent that a president is hired for four years, and trusted to do his or her job. Part of that job includes dealing with things that absolutely, positively should not be talked about in open court. If you don't like a particular administration well enough to give them that job (or re-hire them for another four years)... then all you have to be is persuasive enough to get people to vote your way. But you seem to be suggesting that no president can be trusted for four years. Which means you don't trust them for four minutes, either. On the other hand, you ARE trusting 400 politicians in Congress to make minute-by-minute judgement calls? Because if you don't think ANY president can do it, then you're pushing such authority somewhere else (never mind that pesky constitution, that places such authority with the executive branch).
It's very similar to the consent we give to police departments to hire and use undercover officers. Without them, certain rings of organized crime types cannot be dealt with. If someone who is politically opposed to the police chief can just fire off a lawsuit and, as part of discovery, simply demand that a list of all of the undercover cops is produced in court... well, you get the idea. It's simply absurd. Don't like the way those officers are conducting their work, or frustrated that you don't have enough details of their day-to-day jobs as they risk their lives? Fine. Get the mayor changed in the next election, and have that person - for whom those cops work - change the nature of those jobs. But making who they are and what they do and how they do it a matter of public record, as-is, is like allowing anyone who feels like drafting a lawsuit to just walk up and shoot those officers in the head. And it's even more true for counter-intelligence types, foreign operatives, etc.
If you don't like the fact that covert activities are essential, then elect someone who will take whatever action you think is necessary to make that condition go away. Say, complete appeasement of North Korea. Or a new public policy that supports the Iranian government's every wish in the Middle East. Or a new policy that proclaims the Russian mob as a worthy international organization. Just change those policies, and you'll have no need for the people who have to deal with them under difficult, dangerous circumstances, and no need for their boss (the commander in chief) to protect their identities from those that would like them all killed.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Saying you can't trust Congress to do the right thing with sensitive information is basically a repudiation of democracy
Ah, so you're saying that we CANNOT trust a politician (the president, whose job is to head up the executive branch, which runs the sorts of operations in question) to use good judgement and keep the appropriate information from leaking out and damaging foreign relations or getting people killed, but you're willing to trust 400 politicians to exercise that judgement flawlessly? Do you mean people like Democrat rep. William Jefferson, caught with tens of thousands in bribe cash in his freezer, and who is not only still in office, but who might be considered to be a somewhat compromised keeper of sensitive information... and so Nancy Pelosi re-assigns him to committee that oversees the department of Homeland Security. Is that the sort of person you were thinking should be briefed on the the most sensitive, covert, under-cover operations? He's only still in office because Pelosi didn't want the stain of having to go through the process of kicking him out damage the politics on her side of the aisle. Of course, she would scream (and has, and does) for that sort of action if it's her political opponents exhibiting anything like that very same behavior.
That's the setting in which you'd like the most sensitive, lives-at-risk secrets to be passed around in rooms full of congressional aides, staffers, and the like? Yeah, what could go wrong? MORE than could go wrong when the executive branch keeps it close, and then briefs the next administration on what's up. Or perhaps you're suggesting that Bill Clinton's ham-fisted handling of Bin Laden and Al Queda in the wake of the Cole incident, embassies, etc., should have been hashed out in congress, with operational details and intelligence methods, and quiet communications from other governments (which would never be forthcoming if they thought it was going to be handed over to 400 gasbag legislators in the middle of negotiations) spread all over the news?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.