Remember this from the campaign?
“What the American people don't need is more George Bush secrecy in the White House,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says (in reference to Hillary Clinton in March 2008). Via Newsweek
Well, Obama is increasingly siding with Bush Administration decision on executive privilege and secrecy:
Despite President Obama's vow to open government more than ever, the Justice Department is defending Bush administration decisions to keep secret many documents about domestic wiretapping, data collection on travelers and U.S. citizens, and interrogation of suspected terrorists.
In half a dozen lawsuits, Justice lawyers have opposed formal motions or spurned out-of-court offers to delay court action until the new administration rewrites Freedom of Information Act guidelines and decides whether the new rules might allow the public to see more.
(…) “The signs in the last few days are not entirely encouraging,” said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed several lawsuits seeking the Bush administration's legal rationales for warrantless domestic wiretapping and for its treatment of terrorism detainees. Via AP
This is doubly troubling when one bears in mind that Obama is a constitutional scholar who simply must know that there is no constitutional justification for many of the Bush Administration’s actions. To keep the decisions about their legality legal makes absolutely no sense.
