On Friday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Obama's request to stay the District Judge's Order, which had held that it will review a classified document that the plaintiffs claim proves they were subjected to the illegal eavesdropping (thus conferring standing on the plaintiffs to challenge the legality of Bush's NSA program), and also ordered the Obama administration to provide security clearances to the plaintiffs' lawyers so that they could review the document as well.[...]
[T]he Obama DOJ is now refusing to comply with the Judge's order, actually arguing to the court that only the President can decide whether classified information can be used in a court proceeding, and that courts have no power to make such decisions.
[...]
In the strictest sense, I'm not sure it's fair to say that they've "defied the judge's order" yet (as opposed to urging the Judge one last time not to enforce his own Order on the ground that he lacks the power to do so), but if they haven't yet "defied" the Order, they are extremely close to doing so -- at least as close as the Bush DOJ ever came to explicitly refusing to comply with a Court order. And it's the theories they're espousing to justify their behavior that's what is most notable here.
[...]
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.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated. There may be some delay before your comment is published. It all depends on how much time M has in the day. But please comment!