Via Crooked Timber:
“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.”
That’s a quote from United States v. United States District Court for the Eastern Dist. of Michigan et al, a 1972 Supreme Court decision. It is also, apparently, something whose release would be dangerous to our national security, since the Justice Department tried to redact it out of a letter written by the ACLU. Of course, the decision in its entirety has been publicly available since it was reached in 1972 , so it’s a bit late for the government to try to squelch it.
Ten special bonus points to anyone who can give me a good reason why the publication of this quote is dangerous to national security. I’d offer ten more bonus points to anyone who can tell me why quotes like this should not be blocked, and ten more to anyone who can tell me why trying to make Supreme Court decisions inaccessible is a bad idea, but even though these are just imaginary bonus points, I don’t think I could come up with enough of them to meet the demand.
I’m reminded of the masses in Spain who took to the streets after the March 11 bombings to mourn and let the terrorists know in no uncertain terms that they would not be cowered.
I know there are those who will argue their votes contradict that notion (despite that horse being little more than glue now), but consider the audacity, when no one knew who bombed the trains or whether they would strike again, of taking to the streets in such numbers.
Dissent in the form of assembly is a display of domestic security and it does not rely on the government’s consent.
I’m more reminded of the phrase “never attribute to malice what can be attributed to carelessness or stupidity,” but that’s neither here nor there.
Its important to our understanding of national security either because it reveals that some particular redacter was on auto-pilot, or because the paragraph right before or right afterward really should have been redacted.
It’s officially a meme! Pentagon Censors ‘Right To Know’ Video
Malice versus stupidity
One suspects that if people were more willing to give out-partisans the benefit of the doubt, contemporary political discourse would be far less painful. So, here’s some free advice for partisans on both sides of the aisle: Never attribute to…
because the paragraph right before or right afterward really should have been redacted
In the ACLU’s own court filing?
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This Catalog is for use in the USA only, we try to keep these items available from our inventory here in the US. If you want goods sent outside the USA, …