The Good and Just Leaders who rule our country

You may recall the two Lodi, CA residents I have blogged about in the past. Although they are American citizens they were refused permission to return to the United States after visiting Pakistan because they refused to be interviewed outside the US and without counsel by the F.B.I. with a lie detector.

Now, without explanation, they are apparently allowed to return (perhaps).

Two relatives of a Lodi man who was convicted of supporting terrorists have been cleared to return home from a long trip to Pakistan, ending a five-month standoff in which the U.S. citizens were told they had to cooperate with the FBI to get off the government's no-fly list, a federal law enforcement official said Tuesday.

"There's been a change," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity and would not detail the reason for the move, which was made by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Glenn Greenwald picks up the story at that point:

The Good and Just Leaders who rule our country apparently decreed that these two subjects would be permitted to re-enter the kingdom after their lawyer, Mass, filed an administrative complaint with the Department of Homeland Security on their behalf. Even the way in which the punishment was (maybe) lifted is creepy and Kafkaesque -- "'There's been a change,' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity."

So, there's "been a change," notes an unseen government official in the passive voice, so there's no way to know who made "the change" or what "the change" even is. Whether Mass' complaint had anything to do with "the change" in this case is completely unclear. We have no basis for knowing why they imposed these restrictions in the first place or why they were rescinded or "changed."

And we don't need to know. All we need to know is that we are being Protected and that our Government Leaders are Good and Just and if they secretly and with no explanation ban our fellow citizens from the country, there is Good Reason for them having done that and we should feel nothing but gratitude as a result. We have no right to question or challenge their decisions in court because that would risk disclosure of critical "state secrets." Our Government Leaders can't have their decisions and actions subject to scrutiny by courts because they have an important War to wage. And we have no right to know what they are doing or why, even when it comes to actions they take against American citizens.

... the Bush administration did it anyway, in the most secretive, authoritarian way possible - by unilaterally decreeing a secret punishment that could not be seen, read, understood or meaningfully challenged. Even now, they refuse to clarify whether there are remaining restrictions and, if so, what those restrictions are (Gonzalez "would not say what the changes were" and Mass "said the two received a letter from Homeland Security last week stating that their records had been 'modified to address any delay or denial of boarding.' The letter, though, did not make clear whether they could fly").

All they can do is try to return home to their country and hope that unspecified, unseen officials in the Bush administration deign to grant them permission to re-enter. There's no law or authority for their banishment, just the President's unchecked, unrestrained will that they be banished, which, as we have seen in many other contexts, is now the primary source of authority for how our Government functions.