"But hours after Obama's speech laid out a "delicate balance" on national security, his Justice Department was criticized by a federal judge in California overseeing a case that has delved deeper than any other into one of the government's most highly classified data-gathering programs.

"The Obama administration has invoked the state-secrets privilege in resisting a lawsuit filed by an Oregon charity whose attorneys may have been subjected to warrantless wiretapping. Late Friday, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker issued a terse order that raised the prospect of "sanctions" for government lawyers who have not responded to his order for a plan for how the case should proceed. The sanctions may include awarding monetary damages to the charity, the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation.

"The document amounts to 'Judge Walker's enough-is-enough order,' said Jon Eisenberg, an attorney for the now-defunct charity.

"In a speech at the National Archives on Thursday, Obama said that the administration is "nearing completion of a thorough review" of the way in which his predecessors invoked the state-secrets privilege. The president said that his lawyers would apply a stricter legal test for the kinds of material that can be protected and that the attorney general must personally sign off on any future cases involving the privilege.

" 'We must not protect information merely because it reveals the violation of a law or embarrasses the government,' Obama said.

"His words came on the heels of an appeals court ruling in late April striking down the government's use of the state-secrets privilege in a separate case, involving the "extraordinary rendition" of terrorism suspects to countries where they allegedly faced torture. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit narrowed the scope of the privilege and argued for judges to play a greater role in assessing the validity of such claims by the executive branch."

I commented on that ruling in late April: "I've written before about the Obama administration DOJ protecting the criminal Bush regime's claim of "state secrets" in torture cases. 

"This is unconscionable and egregious on the part of the current White House and seems like an attempted continuation of the anti-constitutional expansion of executive power using secrecy as the excuse."

Let's hope Judge Walker smacks down the Obama DOJ.  Someone has to stand up for the law, since Obama's DOJ seems currently to reflect the policies of the Bush regime. 

What the heck is wrong with Eric Holder and this administration?  

This is decidedly not change and, in fact, in these instances, Obama and his team are going in the absolutely wrong direction.