ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society

In today's New York Times, Jeffrey Rosen reviews Eric Lichtblau's new book "Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice," calling it "a gripping account of Mr. Lichtblau’s efforts to expose various forms of secret surveillance and the Bush administration’s Nixonian efforts to retaliate against him and other critics: 'All the President’s Men' for an age of terror."

In particular Rosen highlights Lichtblau's exploration of

• The broader costs of the Bush administration’s excesses for innocent victims and for the rule of law
• Memorable accounts of some of the 2,700 men locked up after 9/11 by American authorities; most of those men were never shown to have connections to terrorism
• The many innocent victims whose e-mail messages, phone calls and political activities were secretly surveilled
• [How] the Bush administration  . . . was ruthless in retaliating against its critics, in and out of government
• [The discussion of] whether to publish the article by Mr. Lichtblau and Mr. Risen that disclosed the secret surveillance program, [including the claim] that the administration had lied to The Times in describing the scope of the program and in claiming that administration lawyers unanimously supported it