For the Left, It’s Like Being Tortured All Over Again

The Washington Times reports on the Obama administration’s use of the state secrets privilege:

“This administration is continuing to use the enlarged executive powers of the Bush-Cheney administration,” said Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org, who oversaw the report. … “In cases involving allegations of serious lawbreaking by the prior administration, the Obama administration has advanced precisely the same over-broad theory of state secrets that the Bush administration used successfully to terminate lawsuits,” said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney for the ACLU who is representing the plaintiffs in the Jeppesen DataPlan case. “Not a single torture victim has had a day in court, primarily as a result of the Obama and Bush administrations’ evoking of the state secrets privilege.” However, Victoria Toensing, a one-time lawyer for Republicans on the Senate intelligence committee, praised the administration. “The Obama administration has figured out that when you get elected, you have to govern, and that includes protecting national security,” she said.

A bitter pill for the left, which had hoped Obama would just give back the powers the Bush administration had accrued for the executive branch. But this is, perhaps, evidence that the Obama administration is learning from its mistakes. The release of the so-called torture memos blew up in Obama’s face and sparked a severe backlash against the administration’s detainee policies. Obama subsequently refused to release photos that the ACLU and the far-left wanted as evidence for their case that prisoner abuse had been sanctioned by the Bush administration and had become routine on their watch. Now it’s clear that Obama is holding the line on a whole range of lawsuits. There are certainly a lot of folks in the Obama administration who would love to give a bunch of terrorists their day in court to sue members of the intelligence community. Fortunately, it seems like someone over there has realized that that would be a political disaster for the administration as well as an outrage against the Americans who’ve spent the last eight years working to keep America safe.

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