Thursday, April 30, 2009

I'm just going to take a wild guess here, but...

I have a feeling that Obama's response to Michael Scherer's very good question (I know, a freaking miracle) about his use of the State Secret's privilege is not going to satisfy Glenn Greenwald.

It was essentially, "Yeah, it's too broad and it was a shitty argument, but I'll keep making it until it changes, which I favor, but right now the shitty argument is the legal one. Of course, we just happen to have 5,000 other things going on right now so I'm guessing it won't get changed. But my heart's in the right place. So there."

Arguing the wrong position because of the principle of the thing, usually isn't very persuasive. If the "we'd only been here a week" was the problem, that's when you ask for more time to file a response. I have a sneaky feeling in that instance a civil liberties group would give you time to come up with at least a less bad response.

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