Secret law is not law. It is a fundamental breach of the social contract .

[Dragonfli]

58. It appears Obama does not agree and is fighting to keep mysterious redefinitions of our law secret.

The Obama administration on Friday called on the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reject a request by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to release court opinions related to secret government surveillance programs.


Lawyers for the Justice Department argued, according to Reuters, that releasing the opinions would expose the public to dangers that are "real and significant, and, quite frankly, beyond debate."

The Justice Department lawyers, however, did say that the surveillance court is free to release opinions as long as doing so does not violate specific rules.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/309433-justice-department-urges-surveillance-court-not-to-release-opinions#ixzz2YHnRWgAX

It appears Obama does not welcome the debate and in fact is fighting tooth and nail to avoid it.

A recent fact that leaves me confused as to why he would say, "lets have the debate". One might consider such a statement to be less than truthful in light of what his Justice Department has requested.

We should have a debate about what the dangers are and how we developed the surveillance programs to address them. If the dangers are real, we should be briefed on what they are and actually be allowed the debate on whether we wish to give up our privacy rights as well as the transparency of the rule of law itself in order to be protected from the feared dangers.

Is such an extreme approach even effective in protecting us? What exactly are we supposed to be so afraid of that the mere mention of its name may endanger us further somehow?

How is the mere knowledge of the legal justifications used to secretly interpret laws designed to protect us from these unknowable dangers also so dangerous as to be called "real and significant, and, quite frankly, beyond debate." ? How can knowledge of the law in a Democracy be considered so unquestionably dangerous as to require us to be protected from the words of the laws interpretations?

I do not believe a rule of law that is secret and lacks transparency could ever be trusted by a free and aware citizenry. Nor do I wish to give up privacy for an undisclosed amorphous boogie man that I am told is too scary for me to know about or understand.

So yes. I would love to have the debate if only we were allowed to have it.