And in a rendition case, too. In the Ninth Circuit, the Obama Justice Department defended the Bush administration’s assertion of the state-secrets privilege to short circuit the claims of five men who are trying to sue Boeing. The men claim the aircraft manufacturer provided the CIA with airplanes that were used to transport them to countries where they claim they were tortured.

At the Atlantic, Marc Ambinder describes the ACLU as “outraged”:

Executive Director Patrick Romero said that “[c]andidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.”

The Wall Street Journal adds that Michael Ratner, al Qaeda’s lawyer-in-chief from the Leftist Center for Constitutional Rights, is lamenting the “the Justice Department’s move suggests that ‘the chances of bringing a criminal case [against the Bush administration] are getting lower and lower.’” (Of course for Ratner, there’s always Europe, where he has tried to convince at least two countries to bring war crimes charges against former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and where he has indicated he will soon target former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney in those efforts.)