The billionaire, the NSA and the no-fly list: America's 'state secret' obsession has gone too far | Trevor Timm | theguardian.com: "... When the Obama administration took over the final case accusing the Bush administration of torture and invoked state secrets again, the judges were visibly taken aback. Didn’t matter: on appeal, it was thrown out of court yet again. “The only place in the world where these claims can’t be discussed,” ACLU’s Ben Wizner said at the time, “is in this courtroom.” What’s truly revolting about this abuse of the state secrets privilege is that it used to be an issue Democrats ran against. President Obama said hewould reform it in his 2008 campaign, and vice president Joe Biden co-sponsored a bill to do just that. All the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted for state secrets reform as well, explicitly citing NSA wiretapping and torture as things that should never be kept classified from the American people – that should always be able to face a challenge in court. What have we heard since? Not a peep." (read more at the link above)
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