The brief filed by Obama on Friday afternoon (.pdf) has to be read to believed. It is literally arguing that no court has the power to order that classified documents be used in a judicial proceeding; instead, it is the President -- and the President alone -- who possesses that decision-making power under Article II, and no court order is binding on the President to the extent it purports to direct that such information be made available for use in a judicial proceeding....
...
There is only one branch with the power to decide if these documents can be used in this Article III court proceeding: The Executive. What the President decides is final. His decision is unreviewable. It's beyond the reach of the law. No court has the authority to second-guess it or to direct the President to comply with a disclosure order....
...
In the context in which Obama is now invoking this theory, think about what it means: if, as happened here, the President breaks the law, then he can just label the relevant evidence "classified" and refuse to turn it over to a court which is attempting to rule on the legality of the President's actions. Once the President decrees that a court is barred from reviewing the relevant evidence because the President claims it is "classified," that's the end of that....
According to Obama, only the President has the power to decide what is done with classified information, and neither courts nor Congress have any power at all to do anything but politely request that the President change his mind. Therefore, the President has the unilateral, unchallengeable power to prevent any judicial challenges to his actions by simply declaring that the relevant evidence is a secret and refusing to turn it over to a court, even if ordered to do so. That's the argument which the Obama DOJ is now aggressively advancing -- all in order to block any judicial adjudication of Bush's now-dormant NSA program.
This is completely unacceptable. The best-case scenario I can come up with as to why the Obama administration is taking this position is because they think that unearthing all of this Bush lawbreaking is going to unleash a partisan political shitstorm that will effectively derail Obama's ambitious legislative agenda. But ultimately, even if this is the case, it's not an acceptable excuse, for the simple reason that any administration can always make a rationalization of this sort--there's never a "good time" to unleash an agenda-derailing political shitstorm.
Obama needs to release those documents to the court and give standing to those who wish to sue their government for violating their Constitutional rights. It's just that simple.
No comments:
Post a Comment