Secrecy only a bad thing if it's the other side? I don't think so...

And neither does Ed at Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Political Prenups: A Very, Very Bad Idea: [emph mine]

For the last 8 years, the left has quite correctly criticized the Bush administration for the near-fetish they have made of secrecy and lack of transparency in government. The record is appalling: Investigations have been stonewalled, millions of emails have mysteriously -- and conveniently -- disappeared, White House entry logs have been declared classified and off limits to the media, frivolous assertions of privilege have attempted to shield the administration from any scrutiny.

So zealous was the administration to avoid any accountability to anyone even while exercising their most intrusive power that they have even refused to ask a court that operates in secrecy for warrants, as federal law and the constitution demands, before spying on American citizens. The left has, quite rightly, been highly critical of such secrecy, arguing that it undermines public accountability and the right of citizens to know what is being done in their name.

Unfortunately, some on the left are conveniently forgetting this entirely valid critique of government secrecy now that Barack Obama is poised to occupy the oval office.  Matt Miller, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress, [writes in the Washington Post op-ed]:

Just as mergers and marriages that flourished on handshakes and vows had to turn to coarser arrangements once the stakes of break-up became high, the politician-aide relationship now needs its contract. In other words, it is time for the political prenuptial. Barack Obama should simply require key advisers and officials to sign a binding contract of confidentiality as a condition of employment. Aides should pledge not to disclose anything they see until, say, five years after their boss leaves office. The legitimate claims of history would thus be honored, along with the rightful expectations of presidents.

Glenn Greenwald [...] responds perfectly on the substance of Miller's argument:

In light of that, it's staggering that people like Miller, now that there's a Democratic administration on the horizon, would be plotting and advocating still new presidential powers to further strengthen the wall of secrecy behind which our Government operates. One of the very few reasons that we have learned anything meaningful about what the Bush administration did was because people inside the administration decided, for whatever reasons, to shed light on it, to leak it, and to describe what they saw and heard.

Just imagine the ugly, anti-democratic spectacles that would arise if Miller's proposal were accepted. If someone like Scott McClellan were about to publish a book that contained embarrassing -- though completely unclassified -- revelations about what President Obama said or did, then Obama could send lawyers into court seeking to enjoin publication of the book. Or the whistle-blowing author could be sued by the President for damages for having described what he saw. Who could possibly think that's desirable?

If the critique of government secrecy that has been made so powerfully by critics of the Bush administration is a principled one -- and it must be, if it is to mean anything at all -- then it must apply to Democratic administrations as well. If we do not oppose excessive secrecy by the executive branch regardless of the party occupying the White House, that critique is merely partisan hackery rather than a principled stand.

Not only should Obama reject this idea, he should do everything in his power to reverse the course that Bush has set for the executive branch. He should publicly pledge, for example, not to make any assertions of executive privilege to hinder investigations. He should order a review of the staggering cache of documents that the Bush administration has classified and declassify the ones that do not have a clear impact on national security.

In the Senate, Obama led the fight for more transparency, sponsoring a bill that put every single government contract online so citizens could see how their money is being spent. If that fight was about principles rather than expediency, he must apply those principles consistently as president.