Bloodless Coup

Classification and Our "Pathological" President

We classify waaaaay too much information in this country - and sometimes for truly horrible reasons.

The thing to take away from this post by Jacob Sullum is that the Bush administration's concession that it classifies information that presents no security risk at all but that would be politically damaging to the president. Actually, it's worse than that. They think that any information that could be politically damaging to the president by definition is a threat to national security. They're using the classification of information to hide evidence of wrongdoing in the White House. And that they'll declassify the same information when doing so would be politically advantageous to the president.

This is nothing new. I blogged about the politicization of the classification process more than three years ago. But it seems to me that this is a bit worse. Politicizing what information gets classified is pretty ugly. But doing so because you fervently believe that any information that might make people think less of the president is ipso facto a threat to national security is downright pathological.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is claiming that the White House Administration Office is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, a claim that would be farcical if it weren't so flippin' scary.