Comments on: I’ve Got a Secret

By: krit

krit — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 04:05:59 +0000

How does this separate us from totalitarian states, like the old USSR, where comrades judged to be enemies of the state would just disappear off the street and end up in a gulag in Siberia? Wonder what Alexander Solzenitsin would think of our democratic system of justice?

Now that we have this global enemy, we also have the need for maintaining a multitude of state secrets that were never necessary before. Somehow we got through the entire Cold War without maintaining secret prisons or kidnapping people who later turned out to be innocent.

Are “state secrets” just synonymous with the administrations’ desire to cover up embarrassing blunders? They seem to be abusing the term the same way they abused executive privilege during the recent congressional hearings.

By: lurxst

lurxst — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:46:50 +0000

State secrets implies so much. There is certain to be vital and fragile information that is important to keep secret to protect lives, counter-terrorism operations, et. al. There is a legitimate need. But I doubt the circumstances surrounding Al-Masri are in anyway related to a real need and are likely just the results of a massive f*** up in intelligence, just like hundreds of others, for instance, those rounded up for bounties in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But I despise the implication that there is just no where, no how, that any justice seeking party can get its case heard. Meanwhile all matters of national security are given equal judicial value.

I think the Supremes majority are acting completely subservient to the executive, without driving more need for transparency and distinction in the law.

Meanwhile, the Bush misadministration is one of the worst leakers of the truly useful national security intelligence.

By: domajot

domajot — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:36:15 +0000

We are at the point now that the government can work as it chooses behind curtains of secrecy, and there is no recourse for peaking behind the curtains.
Every question, every challenge is met with the “national security” steel door, and it’s being upheld by the courts.

That is very scary. It should be scary even for those
who are comfortable with the curtains around the present administration. Bad precedents have a way of growing and multiplying. What with the WOT not having a foreseeable end date, it’s time to have a fresh look at where this is leading, before it leads us into some very dark woods.

By: Davebo

Davebo — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:02:55 +0000

So Skipper Ed (of the Hobie Cat) after being chastized believes that the US should pay the guy some compensatory damages, but that those damages should be at the discretion of the Executive branch and the victim shouldn’t be allowed to sue for said damages (which despite Ed’s ignorance, is normally the right in such a case even if it occurs outside the US borders).

And for this we’re supposed to give special Ed some props?

No thanks. He ran off a post based on pure ignorance of both the law and common decency and when even his own readers said “What the F#ck”? he backtracked about a half inch.

Thanks Ed. You’re a swell American. No Captain mind you, but a freakin peachy American.

It makes me glad the tanking dollar forced me to cancel my two weeks in Europe this summer. How the hell would I try to explain this?

By: Sam

Sam — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:41:31 +0000

Say what you will about politics and whose doing what, all I know is the Bush administration has made me ashamed to be an American. This is on all of us. This is who we are while that idiot remains in office calling the shots.