Blame the people behind the teleprompter.

Imagine the scandals we haven't seen yet. A lot of that will go back some time, to before the Iraq invasion - details of how fraudulent claims about biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq became "solid intelligence", details of how the torture program was set up, more details on CIA black sites - and that's just the short list.

Also hidden behind state secrets rules is all manner of ridiculously expensive private sector contracts, which is alluded to in the DOJ statement on NSA and its contractors. At least they've trimmed the more ridiculous items off the defense budget, anyway... and then there is the issue of all the private sector contracts from the Bush era, on everything from nuclear weapons to drug development.

It makes one wonder - if it was ever shown that the Iraq was based on deliberate fabrications, would anything become of the story, or would the it just fall into a bottomless well?

And as much as I'd like to see Obama simply revert to his pre-election position on secrecy, I'd also like to see the forensics on this one. Specifically, who argued for the embrace of Bushite secrecy powers and why was it so convincing?

either we rip into Obama with the same zeal and righteous outrage we heaped on President Bush et al or we become hypocrites by definition.

Praise good actions and attempt to punish bad ones. He's going to need us and a victory on civil liberties because it looks like he's going to be metaphorically wearing Hoover's jockstrap on his head in 3 years and 8 months when his hand picked banksters Summers and Geithner can't point to a demonstrable turnaround in our collective economic fortunes. And we'll still be stuck in the quagmires that are Iraq and AfPak.

Sad thing is I think we're going to have to use an amp "that goes to 11" to get him to see the light on this one.

I sent the following email via whitehouse.gov after reading Glenn's posts on the DOJ's actions - we need to let Obama know we're watching and that this path of action cannot be allowed to continue.

*****

Dear President Obama,

I am writing in regards to the recent legal response filed by the DOJ asking for complete dismissal of EFF's lawsuit on the warrantless wire tapping program implemented by the Bush Administration. Your DOJ is asserting that this lawsuit should be dismissed on grounds of 'state secrecy', which mimics prior assertions of the Bush Administration. More disturbing are the new 'sovereign immunity-type' claims that the Patriot Act bars lawsuits of any kind for government surveillance. If granted, this new position would immunize any government surveillance program, legal or illegal, and is extremely disturbing to many of us in the country.

As a fervent supporter of yours during the election, I am deeply disappointed and profoundly disturbed by this position. I worked on your Presidential campaign and my family actively voiced our support for you to our friends and family. We believed in your message and we believed that you would be the antithesis of the Bush Administration. We also believed you last summer after the passage of the FISA bill when you said that you would actively seek to reverse immunity for the telecoms and that you would ‘seek full accountability for past offenses’. However, the recent actions of your DOJ suggest that those in your Administration and perhaps even you are no different from those of the Bush/Cheney regime. These arguments not only reinforce what Bush and Cheney started, they go further in giving powers to the government that are excessive and further violate our constitutional rights.

We volunteered and voted for you because we believed you were different. The actions of the DOJ certainly cast doubt on this belief and if not reversed, I cannot in good conscience continue to support you or vote for you again. We demand that you order the the DOJ to abandon this path of action and restore Americans' rights to live their lives according to the freedoms afforded by the Constitution. Continuing unfettered government wiretaps is not what we asked for when we elected you. We expect more from you and your Administration and ask that you right something that is very wrong for all Americans, including yourself.

That's just a part of the campaign pledge I found from Obama on this topic. It's really amazing how his statement from October, 2007 is perfectly in line with what we are asking him to do now and what we thought we elected him to do.

As one of the commenters at TPM noted, this is change we were deceived in.

I look forward to the Accountability Now action. I hope other groups sign on to the effort.

Talking Points Memo has no credibility with me anymore after Marshall's shameful behavior during the primaries, when he made it his personal mission to promote and defend Barack Obama no matter what. I wouldn't click on that crappy blog if you paid me.

My feeling is that no, he will not be able to keep his high approval rating if he continues to fly directly in the face of what his own base wants. I hope he doesn't become so enamored of the idea of pleasing "centrists", or fearing the label "weak", that he continues to pursue a business-as-usual attitude on so many issues.

While there are still apologists for Obama's actions on the left, they are definitely losing ground. The argument excuses the DoJ lawyers for their "state secrets" defense is not winning the day, and certainly the attempt to simultaneously offer this defense while pretending it's not Obama's policy is something that is only leading to guffaws.

One argument that I've seen, which I think you might want to address, Glenn, is that it is the job of attorneys to represent their clients as aggressively as possible, and that the determination as to whether the arguments are constitutional is solely up to the judge who rules on the case. Personally, I don't find this to be a convincing argument. If the DoJ lawyers go in and positively affirm that the moon is made of green cheese, they are ethically responsible for holding that position. I don't think it's reasonable to say that DoJ lawyers are supposed to go to any lengths to protect other government officials, solely because the defendants work for the government.

DoJ lawyers do not only work for the purpose of defending government officials, they also work to defend the people of the US, and to uphold the constitution. They are completely in the wrong if they present arguments that are plainly unconstitutional.

Finally, there is a great deal of disingenuousness among advocates of this notion of sole judicial responsibility. After all, judges are appointed by the executive branch. It is unreasonable to suppose that a sequence of Presidents, each seeking to expand the power of the executive branch, are somehow going to produce a judiciary comprised of their appointees that are somehow going to stand as the vanguard against that kind of power grab. That kind of complete judicial independence, which happened under the Warren Court, is clearly the exception, not the rule.

We cannot trust the notion that a President whose DoJ lawyers embrace expanded notions of state secrecy will somehow appoint judges who will stand against this expansion of power, invasion of privacy, and erosion of civil rights. That's why this fight for civil rights must include demanding that DoJ lawyers not advance arguments of expanded state sovereignty and state secrecy while defending the actions of their predecessors.