Well, would you look at that! Obama is Bush.


http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs...om-the-bush-era.aspx

Posted Monday, November 02, 2009 4:37 PM
Obama Secrecy Watch II: A State Secrets Affidavit Straight from the Bush Era
Michael Isikoff
When Attorney General Eric Holder invoked the “state secrets” privilege to quash a lawsuit alleging illegal National Security Agency spying last Friday night, his department’s lawyers sounded a lot like those who worked for President George W. Bush. In fact, they justified the action by filing an affidavit from President Obama’s director of national intelligence that is nearly identical to one filed by President Bush’s intelligence director two years ago.

The strikingly similar affidavit—making the same arguments in the almost exactly the same language—is among the strongest examples yet of how Obama administration officials are adopting Bush-era secrecy positions in major national security cases.

Holder’s move came in the case of Shubert v. Obama, a lawsuit filed in 2006 by four residents of Brooklyn, New York. They allege that their overseas phone calls were illegally intercepted by the NSA as part of a massive “dragnet” of warrantless surveillance ordered by Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“It is my judgment that sensitive state secrets are so central to the subject matter of the litigation that any attempt to proceed in the case will…risk exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States,” national intelligence director Dennis Blair wrote in an affidavit submitted by Justice Department lawyers on Oct. 30. If that language sounded familiar to the court, it’s because it was: “It is my judgment that sensitive state secrets are so central to the subject matter of the litigation that any attempt to proceed in the case will…risk exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States,” wrote J. Michael McConnell, Bush’s intel chief, in an affidavit filed on May 25, 2007, in the same case.

“This is Bush 2. It’s Bush the sequel,” said Ilann Maazel, the lawyer for the Shubert plaintiffs, after reading the Justice Department’s motion and the accompanying affidavit by Blair. “They [the Obama officials] are saying the same thing: ‘Were not going to tell you what our spying program is—and even if it’s illegal, you can’t stop it.’” Asked for comment, Wendy Morigi, a spokeswoman for Blair, said: “Given that the plaintiffs allegations have not changed since the privilege was asserted two years ago, it is not surprising that the declarations are very similar.”

quote:

The strikingly similar affidavit—making the same arguments in the almost exactly the same language—is among the strongest examples yet of how Obama administration officials are adopting Bush-era secrecy positions in major national security cases.

Doesn't shock me for a second. And the media won't attach him over it. We don't hear the body count every night. No code pink interrupting Obama speeches.

Now, that the Annointed One is involved, how dare anyone question him or his apostles.