Go Ask Alice

Are you like me on this whole NSA / FISA illegal wiretapping scandal?

Are you too busy to work out the detail but know that of course the Cheney/Bush/Gonzales Administration shredded the Constitution, the only question is whether we'll ever find out how small the pieces were?

Are you just hoping that the "independent" Judiciary and Democratic majority with do the jobs we pay them for, get the truth out and punish, or at the very least stop the Administration for continuing their nefarious ways?

If you're like me, you may get a lot out of this Daily Kos diary by Night Owl where he explains what happened in the Federal Appeals Court where today the huge class action case finally kicked in, Hepting v. AT&T and Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Bush. The diary is an annotation of this original liveblog by Wired.

The government, you know, "our" government, lays out this Catch-22 argument claiming the Executive Branch's absolute right to absolute secrecy, absolutely no oversight, for anything that branch of government says relates to national security.

The President someone working for him can classify anything at any time and he/they can decide that no one, even in the highest levels of the other branches of government, can see it -- even to judge if it should be classified.

Under their argument, We the People, and no other branch representing us, gets to check if someone in their branch is actually abusing their power and breaking the law.

One of the three judges, Judge Harry Pregerson, is eighty-three, was a U.S. Marine Corps First Lieutenant in World War II, and seriously wounded in Okinawa. He's seen a lot of American democracy:

"Who decides whether something is a state secret or not? ... We have to take the word of the members of the executive branch that something is a state secret?"

Garre counters that the courts should give "utmost deference" to the Bush administration.

Judge Pregerson: "What does utmost deference mean? Bow to it?"

Yes. Bow to your President.

Another judge, Judge Hawkins ask if a document provided by an ex-AT&T employee to the Electronic Freedom Foundation (co-plaintiff) is really that secret?

"Every ampersand, every comma is Top Secret?," Hawkins asks.

"This document is totally non-redactable and non-segregable and cannot even be meaningfully described," Bondy answers.

Because if you describe it to someone outside the Administration, then they will have to kill both of you.

And yet another instant classic from today's hearing, the third judge:

The government says the purported log of calls between one of the Islamic charity directors and two American lawyers is classified Top Secret and has the SCI level, meaning that it is "secure Cheshire compartmented information." That designation usually applies to surveillance information.

This allusion to 'Cheshire' inspires the judicial money quote:

Judge McKeown: "I feel like I'm in Alice in Wonderland.".

At the heart of all this evil is, of course, Richard Bruce Cheney. This is info-surveillance porn, power porn. Bureaucratiporn.

The two questions are how the judges will go on this and, if they go against the government, will anything against CheneyBush be enforceable?

Or will the Vice President just cut out the middleman?

And shoot all three judges in the face.