The ACLU represents 5 torture victims in a lawsuit against Jeppesen, a subsidiary of Boeing, which provided air taxi service to the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" torture program. That case is before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California. The Bush Administration tried to block the lawsuit by outrageously claiming "state secrets."

Today, President Obama's Justice Department stood before the Ninth Circuit and stood firmly with George Bush.

“Is there anything material that has happened” that might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent election.

“No, your honor,” Mr. Letter replied.

“The change in administration has no bearing?” she asked.

“No, your honor,” he said once more. The position he was taking in court on behalf of the government had been “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration,” and “these are the authorized positions,” he said.

Human rights activists are fuming, and rightly so. Here's Glenn Greenwald:

It isn't merely that the Obama DOJ is invoking the privilege for this particular case, which contains allegations of torture that are as brutal and severe as any.  That's bad enough. But worse is that they're invoking the most abusive parts of the Bush theory: namely, that the privilege can be used to block the adjudication of entire cases (rather than, say, justify the concealment of specific classified documents or other pieces of evidence), and, worse still, can be used to prevent judicial scrutiny even when the alleged government conduct is blatantly illegal and, as here, a war crime of the greatest seriousness. 

They're embracing a theory that literally places government officials beyond the rule of law.  No minimally honest person who criticized the Bush administration for relying on this instrument can defend the Obama administration for doing so here.

Here's ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero (h/t Daphne Eviatar) 

Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of the same. Candidate 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.

And here's Andrew Sullivan:

The Obama administration will continue the cover-up of the alleged torture of the British resident. The argument is that revealing the extent of the man's torture and abuse would reveal state secrets. No shit. This is a depressing sign that the Obama administration will protect the Bush-Cheney torture regime from the light of day.  And with each decision to cover for their predecessors, the Obamaites become retroactively complicit in them.

So what are they hiding from us? Wouldn't you like to know?

Why the heck is President Obama protecting torturers? Perhaps someone in the White House Press Corpse will ask him, or perhaps a citizen will ask at a Recovery Bill rally.

Update 1: Hopefully the Ninth Circuit will rule for the torture victims. Then President Obama would have to decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court, where Justice Anthony Kennedy would be The Decider.

Update 2: Daphne Eviatar warns about the second crucial legal test for Obama on Friday - whether he will release the crucial Yoo-Bybee torture memos:

The case, American Civil Liberties Union v. Department of Justice, has been going on for five years now, with the ACLU battling the Bush administration to turn over documents sought under the federal Freedom of Information Act that would reveal crucial information about the development of policies regarding treatment of detainees in the “war on terror” and could help determine whether Bush officials broke domestic and international law...

Although the Bush administration consistently refused to produce the memos, citing various legal privileges and exceptions to the Freedom of Information law, advocates are hopeful that the new administration might take a different approach.