Supreme Court denies cert in el-Masri rendition case  Mistaken
identity case tossed on mistaken case law    • alert   • submit
to reddit  Evaluating the cost of a DDoS attack  The Supreme
Court today declined certiorari in the case of El Masri v.
United States, effectively endorsing the Cheney administration's
notorious extraordinary rendition program.  The case had been
dismissed at both the district court level and the appellate
level based on the administration's invocation of the state
secrets privilege. The case offered a golden opportunity to
revisit the case law underlying the state secrets privilege, as
well as examine the rendition program itself, but the
Republican-dominated court dismissed the appeal without comment.
Claimed six times from its inception in 1953 up through 1976 -
the darkest days of the Cold War - the current administration
has claimed the privilege 39 times since 2001. The privilege
amounts to a "trust us" argument by the government, and once it
is claimed, from an evidentiary per