Bush wielding secrecy privilege to end suits

"The Bush administration is aggressively wielding a rarely used executive power known as the state secrets privilege in an attempt to squash hard-hitting court challenges to its anti-terrorism campaign," according to the Chicago Tribune.

"The government is invoking the privilege in an attempt to wipe out the heart of a lawsuit that seeks to examine rendition, the secretive and controversial practice of sending terror suspects to foreign countries where they might be tortured.

Use of the secrets privilege also could eliminate a suit by a former FBI contract linguist who charges that the bureau bungled translations of terrorism intelligence before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Bush administration is also using the secrets privilege to seek dismissal of a third case not related directly to terrorism. And the administration has invoked the privilege in less sweeping ways on several other occasions."

This is asinine. Of course, everyone agrees that the government needs to keep so information to itself, but they are using it for political protection. I find invoking state secrets to make renditions immune from legal challenge in court a pretty dangerous precedent - one worthy of the kind of authoritarian regime Bush loves to invoke in his speeches.