President Barack O'Bush and civil liberties

ACLU's Executive Director Anthony Romero's blunt talk on why he is disillusioned with Obama's presidency to the point of being "disgusted":

"It’s 18 months and, if not now, when? ... Guantanamo is still not closed. Military commissions are still a mess. The administration still uses state secrets to shield themselves from litigation. There's no prosecution for criminal acts of the Bush administration. Surveillance powers put in place under the Patriot Act have been renewed. If there has been change in the civil liberties context, I frankly don't see it."

Yep. I have blogged many times, quoting the ACLU and Greenwald on how the Obama administration continues with Bush's policies and practices--most, if not all, of which were severely criticized by Obama as the candidate.  Simply atrocious.

Well, renew your ACLU membership, or become a member. (ht)

Update: I just read this wonderful piece by Greenwald, in which towards the end he writes:

Civil liberties and a belief in the need to check government power is something many people care about only when the other party is in control.  They seem to believe that there are two kinds of leaders -- Good ones (their party) and Bad ones (the other party) -- and it's only when the latter wield power that safeguards and checks are necessary.  Good leaders, by definition, are entitled to trust and faith that they will wield power appropriately and for Good ends, thus rendering unnecessary things like accountability, transparency, oversight and even due process.  Of course, the core premise of our government from the start was that political power will be inevitably abused if it is exercised without constraints, that nothing is more irrational or destructive than placing blind faith in political leaders to exercise unchecked power magnanimously.  But the temptation to want to follow Leaders blindly -- to believe in their core Goodness and to thus vest them with unverified trust -- is almost as compelling a part of human nature as the abuse of power when exercised without checks and in the dark.

That's why self-anointed defenders of the Constitution are instantly transformed into authoritarians and back again every time there is a change of party control:  many people don't believe in these principles generally, but only when political leaders they dislike are in power.  The problem, though, is that endorsing civil liberties abuses because one's own Party is in power virtually ensures that those abuses will become permanent, available to future leaders from the other Party as well.  That was the argument which fell on deaf ears when made to cheering Bush supporters, and it's barely more effective now.