President Obama continues President Bush's Stonewalling

Dear Friends,

First, in honor of A Little Leeway, I am including a picture of a beautiful cactus from Arizona:

A couple of days ago The New York Times ran an editorial entitled "Spying, Civil Liberties and the Courts" (here) that reminded me that President Obama is continuing to use Bush Administration reasons to try to stop people from challenging the Constitutionality of the laws that tried to authorize spying and other invasions of our Constitutional rights in the wake of 9/11 and the continuation of the fear mongering of the Republican Party and the wimpy Democrats.  The Bush Administration used two legal theories to stop any challenges that have nothing to do with the substance of the complaints. 

The first is "standing".  Under our system of jurisprudence, a party must have standing to bring a law suit.  The party must have been injured or have a real claim.  The lack of standing has historically been used to stop claims of environmental damages and other important social justice issues.  The Bush Administration used the theory that unless you could prove you had been illegally spied on, you did not have standing to bring an action to challenge the Constitutionality of the laws that attempted to authorize spying. 

The second is the state secrets doctrine.  Under this doctrine, the Bush Administration would claim that whatever the challenging party wanted was a state secret the disclosure of which would jeopardize our national security so the law suit had to be dismissed.  Of course, it would use the state secrets doctrine to block you from finding out if you had been spied on so that then you would not have standing.  Sounds like Alice in Wonderland.

Unfortunately, the Obama Administration has continued to use these two tools to stop any challenges of the many violations of our Constitutional rights.  The New York Times editorial reminds us once again that the Obama Administration is not ending some of the worst policies of the Bush Administration but is in fact continuing them.   Whatever happened to change we can believe in?  In many cases it apparently is make believe.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal