Sunday, October 28, 2007

Next time let's redact any references to that pesky constitution, too

First there was that part of a court opinion that was redacted because it revealed the way we threaten to torture people in order to drag false confessions from them. And now the Justice Department is redacting not only court opinions, but ACLU court filings, for no apparent reason except that it finds the arguments therein politically inconvenient:
Ostensibly, they would use their powers of censorship only to remove material that truly could jeopardize US operations. But in reality, what did they do? They blacked out a quotation from a Supreme Court decision:
"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."

The mind reels at such a blatant abuse of power (and at the sheer chutzpah of using national security as an excuse to censor a quotation about using national security as an excuse to stifle dissent).

Read the rest of that post; it's short, but I don't think I can add much to it. This is abhorrent.

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