White House Tries to Prevent Judge From Ruling on Surveillance Efforts

State secrets doctrine was just tacitly upheld a couple of years ago in General Dynamics. I don't think the Supreme Court is willing to entertain a challenge to the doctrine any time soon.

That said, state secrets doctrine is not a get out of jail free card. Both General Dynamics and Reynolds were contracts cases. There was no allegation that the government was exceeding the scope of its domestic powers. Dismissing a case on state secrets grounds has a separation of powers implication when the government invokes the privilege in the face of allegedly unconstitutional activity than when it invokes it in a contractual dispute. Historically, the courts have given much more scrutiny to claims of national security privileges when such claims prevent them from reviewing Constitutional questions. Especially in this context where the cat is already out of the bag.

As President he's "supposed" to fight for this, even if it's crap. That's how our "adversarial" government works. That's why it's CHECKS... As in gloves off, missing teeth, hockey checks.

It's up to the other TWO BRANCHES to get off their lazy asses and knock the Executive branch down a peg or two. They liked blaming the President but they gotta do the WORK to take things back. Shut up and FIGHT!

This is great - they are making it worse for themselves!

Before the Snowden revelations came along nobody took you seriously if you thought we lived in a world of mass surveillance. Now we all know all too well that we do.

As the scandal unravels the government are clinging to the 'terrorism' fig leaf. They haven't got anything else, no other plausible excuse for what they have been up to. Nobody has completely seen through it yet, or, if they have then they haven't shared with the rest of the world exactly what it is that they are hiding. (There is something else going on, the 'al-qaeda' thing is just a ruse, however nobody really believes that it is a complete, total, utter sham of emptiness. We aren't there yet...)

They are going to have to squirm for a little bit longer before the grand reveal. Exactly who steps up to do this is not known, however, there are plenty of candidates out there, getting bolder by the day. One thing is for certain though, that grand reveal will happen and, when it does, this NSA spying lark will be put into perspective. That perspective will show the spying story so far to be nothing more than an appetizing 'light snack' before the immensely satisfying main course. Compared to what we have got coming the fall of the Berlin Wall was nothing!

Anyone care to guess what the ace is that trumps the government's 'terrorism' card? (There is one!)

The actual case dockets and documents can be found here:

Jewel v. NSA - http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=1911200

Shubert v. Obama - http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=1901515

There really is nothing the government won't do to keep its illegal surveillance powers.