John Gilmore has sued the US Government in order to force it to disclose the laws requiring ID checks when we fly; the government’s response has been that the laws themselves must remain secret for “national security reasons,” which precisely no one with half a brain believes.

It gets better, though: now the Feds are insisting that their own arguments in the case must be kept secret as well. What about oversight?

“We’re dealing with the government’s review of a secret law that now they want a secret judicial review for,” one of Gilmore’s attorneys, James Harrison, said in a phone interview Sunday. “This administration’s use of a secret law is more dangerous to the security of the nation than any external threat.”

Damn right. I fear what an unchecked Executive may do far more than I fear Al Queda. We will always have enemies beyond our borders, either because we backed friendly dictators or committed some other foreign policy cockup, or because sometimes people just hate for no good reason; that’s a given. But we shouldn’t have to deal with these kinds of enemies of freedom, liberty, and transparent government within our own republic. Christ.