White House Invokes ‘STATE PRIVILEGE’ To HALT Inquiries Into Data Mining

[JDPriestly]

13. The people who wrote the Constitution created three

separate branches. They created a system of checks and balances. The system described in the OP gives the president the power of an absolute monarch. He alone can declare information to be of vital national security importance. He alone can shut that information off and protect it from the scrutiny of the courts.

That is not government of the people, by the people and for the people. That is not one person one vote, at least not one person one informed and meaningful vote.

This is a dictatorship, pure and simple. It may not be a dictatorship in all things, but all the president (regardless what his name is) has to do is to declare something to be of national security importance, and he can dictate that we can't know about it. That is nonsense. It wouldn't be nonsense if it were used carefully. But the problem is that Bush and Obama have used this authority too broadly. This needs to be stopped.

I'm not interested in having any particular information, but apparently others are. And they should be able to acquire the information they need.

As I said, this rule makes the president and his security administration into a dictatorship. It violates the highest values of our nation.