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Is Obama embracing the lawless, omnipotent executive?

On Friday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Obama's request to stay the District Judge's Order, which had held that it will review a classified document that the plaintiffs claim proves they were subjected to the illegal eavesdropping (thus conferring standing on the plaintiffs to challenge the legality of Bush's NSA program), and also ordered the Obama administration to provide security clearances to the plaintiffs' lawyers so that they could review the document as well. The Obama DOJ immediately announced they intend to try to appeal again -- the third time, since Obama's Inauguration, that the Obama DOJ will try to argue before a court that the case should not heard at all.In the meantime, though, the Obama DOJ is now refusing to comply with the Judge's order, actually arguing to the court that only the President can decide whether classified information can be used in a court proceeding, and that courts have no power to make such decisions. Here is the remarkable description of Obama's actions by The San Francisco Chronicle's Bob Egelko:
Feds defy judge's order in Islamic group case
A federal appeals court rejected the Obama administration's attempt Friday to stop a judge in San Francisco from reviewing a challenge to the wiretapping program ordered by former President George W. Bush.
Hours later, President Obama's Justice Department filed papers that appeared to defy the judge's order to allow lawyers for an Islamic organization to see a classified surveillance document at the heart of the case. The department said the judge had no power to enforce such an order.

In the strictest sense, I'm not sure it's fair to say that they've "defied the judge's order" yet (as opposed to urging the Judge one last time not to enforce his own Order on the ground that he lacks the power to do so), but if they haven't yet "defied" the Order, they are extremely close to doing so -- at least as close as the Bush DOJ ever came to explicitly refusing to comply with a Court order. And it's the theories they're espousing to justify their behavior that's what is most notable here.
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The brief filed by Obama on Friday afternoon (.pdf) has to be read to believed. It is literally arguing that no court has the power to order that classified documents be used in a judicial proceeding; instead, it is the President -- and the President alone -- who possesses that decision-making power under Article II, and no court order is binding on the President to the extent it purports to direct that such information be made available for use in a judicial proceeding. From page 5 of the Obama Brief, filed after its loss on Friday:

That's about as clear as it gets. There is only one branch with the power to decide if these documents can be used in this Article III court proceeding: The Executive. What the President decides is final. His decision is unreviewable. It's beyond the reach of the law. No court has the authority to second-guess it or to direct the President to comply with a disclosure order. That's the mentality -- and even the language -- drawn directly from the earliest Yoo Memorandum that created the theoretical foundation for what would be the omnipotent presidency:MORE