same as the old boss

As with the torture case previously discussed, the Obama administration has also continued the Bush administration policy of attempting to use state-secrets to block the only remaining investigation into the Bush administration's illegal domestic wiretapping programme. Wired has an extensive story here on what is happily the latest failure in that ongoing attempt to cover up these Federal crimes. Glenn Greenwald, reliably, has extensive commentary here, including:

One of the worst abuses of the Bush administration was its endless reliance on vast claims of secrecy to ensure that no court could ever rule on the legality of the President's actions. They would insist that "secrecy" prevented a judicial ruling even when the President's actions were (a) already publicly disclosed in detail and (b) were blatantly criminal -- as is the case with the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program, which The New York Times described on its front page more than three years ago and which a federal statute explicitly criminalized. Secrecy claims of that sort -- to block judicial review of the President's conduct, i.e., to immunize the President from the rule of law -- provoked endless howls of outrage from Bush critics.

Yet now, the Obama administration is doing exactly the same thing. Hence, it is accurately deemed "a blow to the Obama administration" that a court might rule on whether George Bush broke the law when eavesdropping on Americans without warrants. Why is the Obama administration so vested in preventing that from happening, and -- worse still -- in ensuring that Presidents continue to have the power to invoke extremely broad secrecy claims in order to block courts from ruling on allegations that a President has violated the law?

What's most painful is that the document they're trying to prevent the court from legally seeing via this privilege has already been published. The claimants already have it. It's not secret in any way - this action is not in any way actually about state security; it's about continuing the ability of the executive branch and higher members of the government to be immune from, or above, the law - as the political class deems is necessary and right, because, after all, the right people are in charge. (Them.)

There's more, but not better, at the Greenwald link.

extremely briefly

Equities markets on Friday closed below critical support levels, but the VIX is still pretty low (by recent standards) and the market isn't hugely overbought. This is an unstable configuration at best. Worse, there was selling in long Treasury bonds even as the market fell below these levels. Karl is worried about Monday.

I'm worried about the bond market, but there's nothing new about that. Mr. Obama is clearly betting it can absorb a lot more borrowing. Well, either it can, or it can't, and if this passes, we're going to find out. Won't that be fun?

This commentary on "animal spirits" and the talk-it-up psychological necessity of stimulus meme includes the very necessary question, "Delusional thinking about credit risk got us into this mess, so now the only thing to get us out is more widespread and more doggedly institutionalized delusional thinking?" Obviously, I feel the incredulity. Reality will, repeat will, eventually bite your ass.

I had a lot of other things but haven't had an easy way to keep them organised while my laptop's hard drive is ever-so-slowly being replaced by Hitachi. Sorry; these will be sparse and small until then.

Me, tonight, Caffe Ladro, yes really

It's the last Saturday of the month which means it's open mic night at Caffe Ladro in Bothell, and I'll be playin'. Shows start at 8pm; I'm going to show up early and try to get an early slot, so I can then head off to Vixy and Tony's Soul Food Books gig without missing too much of it.