It's Almost Too Easy...

to take shots at the Justice Department for the positions it takes in defending cases concerning domestic surveillance.

From an article by Adam Liptak in today's online edition of The New York Times:

"Plaintiffs and judges' clerks cannot see [the Justice Department's] secret filings. Judges have to make appointments to review them and are not allowed to keep copies. Judges have even been instructed to use computers provided by the Justice Department to compose their decisions….Justice Department lawyers have been submitting legal papers not by filing them in court but by placing them in a room at the department. They have filed papers, in other words, with themselves….[A] government lawyer refused to disclose whether he had a certain security clearance, saying information about the clearance was itself classified….[The government accused plaintiffs in one case of misconduct by 'mishandling] information contained in [a] classified document' by, among other actions, preparing filings on their own computers."

It doesn't seem necessary for me to say anything about any of this. To steal from numerous comedians over the years, "you can't make this stuff up."