When secrets are secret

[babsbunny]

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070819/OPINION02/708180315/

A COURT challenge to the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program has run squarely into a comic-book caricature of a monolithic government slapping aside all challenges to its power by invoking the Kafkaesque distortion of the legal system inherent in the concept of "state secrets."

This Bizarro World tableau, playing out for real in a federal appeals court in San Francisco, is far more menacing than it is entertaining, however. Indeed, it threatens the very foundation of the American system of justice.

When the defendants in a criminal action cannot see the evidence against them on the grounds that the evidence itself is a secret, the Constitution is being subverted.

And that goes double for the administration's increasingly frequent - and dubious - claims of "national security" involving electronic eavesdropping.

[Trillo]

1. And don't forget the

corollary, they not only declare themselves innocent with such state secrets, they also declare others guilty.

It's quite sad.