You can always count on Congress to do the wrong thing when conservative hissy fits come into play, but at least a judge saw the light.

A Brooklyn judge Friday delayed enforcement of a new federal law that cut off funding to the controversial community organization ACORN.

Judge Nina Gershon said the government violated ACORN's right to due process before enacting a law that threatened to financially destroy the organization.

"The question here is only whether the Constitution allows Congress to declare that a single, named organization is barred from all federal funding in the absence of a trial," Gershon wrote in a 21-page decision.

She said ACORN had proved it would suffer "irreparable harm" if the money was cut off.

ACORN lawyers expect the feds to open the purse strings soon. The Justice Department said the decision is under review.

Here's the pdf of the ruling.

On another matter, ColorofChange threatened to sue the defamatory website that was started to defend "phony tears" Glenn Beck because they used false information supplied by extremist sites like NewsMax. DefendGlenn was forced to post an apology on their website stating that they used patently false information -- lies, basically, to attack their opponents.

ColorofChange:

After ColorOfChange.org took on Glenn Beck for his race-baiting and fear-mongering, Beck's supporters fought back using lies, distortions, and more race-baiting to defend him. DefendGlenn.com was the worst, mounting a campaign to scare advertisers into staying on his show.

After we threatened them with a lawsuit, DefendGlenn.com has backpedalled. It should make clear to advertisers who have pulled their support that they've done the right thing...read on

Conservatives will say and do anything to smear and destroy a contrary belief. It's right out the Nixon "dirty tricks" book club.
Take a look at a screen grab of their apology below to Color of Change.

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Ron Reagan slams Ron Christie for his defense of Dick Cheney's recent attack on President Obama accusing him of 'giving aid and comfort to the enemy'. Just how much self-loathing does Ron Christie have to a) be a Republican to begin with and b) to carry that much water for Dick Cheney? God what a tool.

Transcript via Lexis Nexis.

MATTHEWS: Ron, you`re an attorney, and I respect your professionalism, but let`s take a look at the Constitution, Article 3, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, treason against the United States. Here`s how it`s defined. According to the Constitution, the United States shall consist -- it shall consist only in levying war against them or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. The very language of the Constitution which defines treason he has now leveled against the president of the United States. You don`t have a problem with that?

CHRISTIE: I...

MATTHEWS: "Aid and comfort" is a particular constitutional set of words, "aid and comfort to the enemy" in this case. You don`t have any problem with him charging the president with doing that?

CHRISTIE: We are giving...

MATTHEWS: You don`t have any problem with that wording?

CHRISTIE: No, I don`t.

MATTHEWS: ... that wording.

CHRISTIE: We are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. And to my friend, Ron Reagan, I would say, no, this has nothing to do with our justice system. It has everything to do with our justice system. The Bush administration didn`t condone terrorism. I don`t understand why you would condone a system where people who are terrorists, who are captured on the battlefield, who were not given Miranda rights, would then be allowed to come into open court, be able to challenge the evidence against them.

It would make a mockery of our system, to say nothing of the fact, Ron, that the president of the United States and the attorney general have said, Oh, they`ll be convicted and executed. As a defense attorney, I can tell you those attorneys are going to say, We can`t get a good jury pool because the president and the attorney general have already condemned the well. It`s ridiculous!

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These tough guys sure do have a lot of fear about trusting the United States court system, don't they? During an interview with Andrea Mitchell today Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond joined the long list of Republicans carping about the Obama administration moving the trial of 9/11 suspects to New York.

Bond: Well I think it’s an insult to the memory of those who were brutally murdered on Sept. 11th to have the leaders behind these cowardly acts of terrorism sit in a courtroom blocks away from ground zero and reap the full benefits and protections of the U.S. Constitution.

I'd love to know how giving these men a fair trial so that the victims of 9/11 can finally have their day in court is insulting them. I would think the opposite is true and that they would be happy to finally have some closure to the whole ordeal. Bond throws this stink bomb out there a bit later in the interview.

Bond: And there is no reason whatsoever to try this person in an open courtroom in the United States with all of the powers that defendants, that American defendants have to get information and expose all of the things that they want to talk about and try to recruit more people like Maj. Hasan who just shown us that Americans can be propagandized and turned into deadly terrorists if they get the word from the leaders who wish to bring death and terror to the United States. I think it’s a disaster.

Yeah, let's wrap this into the tragic shooting at Fort Hood and pretend the two issues have anything to do with each other. Maj. Hasan didn't go on a shooting rampage because he saw terrorist suspects going to trial in the United States. Maybe if we quit dropping bombs on poor people's heads that are not a threat to our country the terrorists out there would have a few less recruiting tools at their disposal.

Bond's real problem with these trials is that they will expose what's been done in our name with this ridiculous "war on terror" that is nothing more than excuse to feed the military industrial complex that Bond and his ilk love so much, and that Dwight Eisenhower so rightfully warned us about.

It's astounding to me, that California voters still remain so largely uninformed (or indifferent) about the root causes of the state's yearly fiscal crisis. Those who want to change things have an uphill battle:

Reporting from Sacramento - Backers of an overhaul of California's government, who hope to leverage disgust with Sacramento into support for changing how the state raises taxes and spends money, have a difficult path ahead, according to a new poll of California voters.

Major segments of the electorate see the state's problems as the product of unrestrained lawmakers driven by special interests to waste taxpayer money, and reject arguments that structural issues with the state's Constitution and government institutions are to blame.

Voters don't want the tax code overhauled in the ways that many fiscal experts promise would tamp down the wild revenue swings that have led to a constant state of budget crisis in California. They don't want the Constitution changed to allow a simple majority of lawmakers to push a budget onto the governor's desk, as most other large states allow. And they don't want the state to touch Proposition 13 property tax restrictions, even if residential property taxes would remain strictly limited.

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Keith and Eugene Robinson had the same reaction I did to watching members of Congress out there calling for something close to the overthrow of our government. I agree completely with Eugene Robinson—it was frankly appalling.

OLBERMANN: Good evening from New York.

An elected Republican official today is leading a protest on the west steps of the Capitol that compared health care reform to Nazi death camps and encouraged mindless harassment of and possibly violence against the government. Not tea baggers anymore, not demagogic commentators, an actual congresswoman inciting a hateful rebellion against the rule of law and order. Her name is Michele Bachmann.

Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN: As if that were not bad enough, Ms. Bachmann today joined by the House minority leader as well as countless other GOP representatives. This orgy of veiled threat and not so veiled racism of white power minority rule now fully the province of the Republican Party. Welcome to the coup!

Congressman Bachmann staging what she tried to claim was a spontaneous meet-up of opponents to health care reform, in 25 buses paid for by the AstroTurf group Americans for Prosperity, could be considered spontaneous. An estimated 4,000 people today answering Ms. Bachmann‘s call, bringing with them on those buses, not just their misunderstanding of health care reform but also their hatred of President Obama, as well as pure hatred, period.

Lee Fang of ThinkProgress.org taking these photographs of a sign that reads “National Socialist Health Care, Dachau, Germany, 1945,” superimposed over the horrific images of the corpses from Dachau. Other signs are slightly less shameful but many in no way related to health care.

Congresswoman Bachmann urging these people to rebel.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BACHMANN: It was Thomas Jefferson who said—a revolution every now and then is a good thing. What do you think?

(CHEERING)

BACHMANN: You feel so good right now, and we, the members of Congress that are gathered on these steps for this press conference, are so honored that you are here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Press conference? The geniuses at the Republican study committee trying to rebrand today‘s event not as a protest, nor a rally, but as a press conference. Urging House staffers in an e-mail last night to please make sure your boss does not turn this event a rally.

Does any of this sound like press conference to you?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAUL BROUN, GEORGIA: Who will kill this bill? You will! You will! And we must. The Constitution of the United States starts with three very powerful words: “We, the people.” And we the people are speaking. Nancy Pelosi, listen.

Fellow patriots, go tell your congressman you‘re not going to eat this rotten stinking fish that is Pelosi health care! We are going to put a stop sign in front of her steamroller of socialism. Go to it, Patriots!

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How is that the House Minority Leader can mix up the U.S. Constitution with the Declaration of Independence in front of a Tea Party crowd at the Capitol? Who knows..but he did it, pulling out his pocket copy of the Constitution he's pledged to uphold, today pledging to "stand here with our Founding Fathers, who wrote in the preamble: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident ..."

Here's more from Rick Sanchez.

SANCHEZ: Representative John Boehner is House minority leader, the number-one Republican in the House of Representatives. So, you would think that he would know the Constitution, know in fact the thing backward and forward.

Well, I got a bit of a surprise for you. Here's John Boehner just a short time ago, House Minority Leader John Boehner addressing a TEA Party rally against health care reform from the marble steps of the U.S. Capitol.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOEHNER: This is my copy -- this is my copy of the Constitution. And I'm going to stand here with our founding fathers who wrote in the preamble, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: And do you believe it? As most fifth-graders would know, the document Boehner was quoting is not the Constitution. It's the Declaration of Independence. I'm assuming he knows the difference, but maybe -- I'm not sure now.

Those other House Republicans, the ones behind him, Roy Blunt, Virginia Foxx, Michele Bachmann, are they cringing in despair or just blissfully unaware? I don't know.

Okay, maybe requiring minimum IQs as a standard to run for national office is a bit harsh, but can we at least insist that politicians prove that they are actually human and not some mindless automaton programmed with talking points?

(In the past,) Foxx has claimed Democratic reforms would mean seniors are “put to death by their government,” that health reform is a “distraction,” and that “there are no Americans who don’t have health care.” She was at it again today on the House floor, arguing that health reform is a greater threat to our country than “any terrorist right now in any country”:

Everywhere I go in my district, people tell me they are frightened. … I share that fear, and I believe they should be fearful. And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room — this very room — and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.

Normally, this is where my head makes a very loud thunk against my desk at the stupidity, but instead I just find myself really angry at this illogical fear mongering and ugliness. But what can you expect from a politician ugly enough to call Matthew Shepard's murder "a hoax"?. Obviously her lip service towards valuing life doesn't really mean any living people.

Rep. Foxx, the lives of those 44,000 Americans who die needlessly every year because they do not have insurance is blood on your hands.

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David Sirota takes on Florida GOP Chairman and Obama school speech fear monger Jim Greer on Don Lemon's weekend show on CNN. This time the topic is the collective freak out by people at these Tea Bag protests now that the scary black man has been elected.

Sirota asks Greer where the protests were when Bush was trampling all over our constitution and running up the deficit and you've just got to love Greer's response here -- deflect and denial.

First Greer cites Bush's terrible poll numbers and tries to conflate the protests going on now to the people protesting the Iraq War, who as Sirota correctly points out were completely different protesters and not the people taking to the streets now.

After admitting that they are different people Greer tries to paint the Tea Baggers as just every day Americans from all political walks of life, and not the fringe right of the conservative movement.

Then Greer tries to pretend that race isn't part of the problem with these protesters, which Don Lemon calls him out for.

LEMON: David, what's happening here?

SIROTA: Well, again, I think that there's a segment of the population that does not want to accept President Obama as a legitimate president. And I think that you can tell that this is really a partisan lynch mob by understanding that these people were not out making the exact same criticism of President Bush. Where were the people who were worried about the constitution when President Bush trampled the constitution with the Patriot Act? Where were these people talking about government spending when President Bush inflated the deficit to record proportions?

LEMON: Jim, that's a good question.

SIROTA: Where were they?

GREER: Well, I think you saw where they were when the polls showed that unfortunately from a Republican standpoint, President Bush was down in the 20s. I mean, the American public -

SIROTA: Where were the protests?

GREER: Well, you know, there were people protesting President Bush because I saw them quite often as I traveled the country.

SIROTA: Do you think conservative tea partiers are protesting --

LEMON: I do have to say no that people did protest the Iraq war. I saw a lot of that. I covered a lot of it.

GREER: A lot of that.

LEMON: People said they had pictures of President Bush. They hung things of him in effigy. They put it in on fire, lit them on fire. So there were things, but they were protesting a war, and that they were looking for evidence that never turned up. So it's kind of a different thing, but he was protested.

SIROTA: Those are different protesters.

GREER: Where we are today --

Well, they may be different protesters, but you asked me, where were they? And there were people protesting President Bush. Where we are today, Don, David, is that this administration has tried to radically change the role of government in our daily lives and the role of government in major industries that have made this country great. And that is why Americans, not just Republicans, but Americans are frustrated. They can't get answers to their questions. They're concerned about President Obama's views of what America should look like today and what it will look like in the future. And they just reject that. And they're angry. They're frustrated because it's not the America that they brought up to have great respect for, and they're concerned.

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Howard Kurtz is still playing water carrier for the Bush administration and their WMD lies used to justify invading Iraq and when called out for it by Daniel Ellsberg who says he'll name names as to who in the Bush administration knew better what does he do? Why try to change the subject of course!

Ellsberg is the subject of a new documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers which debuts this week in New York, Los Angeles and at the Toronto Film Festival.

KURTZ: Do you think that the Obama administration is getting as much pressure from the press as it should, particularly compared to previous administrations, say the Bush administration?

ELLSBERG: None. No administration has gotten the pressure that it should from the press on this point. We got into Iraq with as much deceptions as occurred in Vietnam, a generation earlier. A performance by the press no better than we saw of pressing behind the lies of the administration than we got during the Johnson administration when I was in; nor did we get a single person within the administration, the Bush administration now, who saw that the adventure into Iraq was going to hurt our counter-terrorism efforts, hurt our security, and was violating the Constitution in terms of treaties. Another example would be treaties on torture and our domestic laws on torture. People who saw that clearly, not one of them leaked to Congress, or to the press.

(CROSS TALK)

KURTZ: Obviously, there were conflicting opinions and conflicting evidence, for example on WMDs. But let me come back to this.

ELLSBERG: No, pardon me.

KURTZ: Go ahead.

ELLSBERG: When it came to lying -- when it came to lying about the nature of the evidence that the evidence was unequivocal, that was as much of a lie as saying that evidence of the attack on August 4th, on our destroyers, was unequivocal. Yes, there was --

KURTZ: You're comparing the Bush's building of the case to go to war in Iraq, with Lyndon Johnson's Tonkin Gulf war incident, just to be clear.

ELLSBERG: I am, indeed. It's exactly the same in the performance not only by the president, but by all of the people who knew that it was a disaster. And I could name names there, if you want.

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Anyone who is aware of all Internet traditions has by now seen the footage of Barney Frank taking down the Larouchie who asked him if he would support a "Nazi policy" by asking her, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" But Rep. Frank was in rare form that night, standing up to the uninformed shrieking of the right and offering a real lesson in how to argue with conservatives. Rep. Frank's office provided C&L with the tapes of that town hall meeting in Dartmouth from last week, and I put together a sort of greatest hits reel.

Frank explains what deficit hawks should concern themselves with:

"I am struck by those who say, well, you don't care about the deficit. No, I do. I do care about the deficit. That's one of the reasons, not the only one, why I voted against the single most wasteful expenditure in the history of America. The Iraq war. If we hadn't gone to the war in Iraq, which I thought was a terrible mistake and voted against, we would have had more than enough money to pay for health care."

He argues with a "tenther" who thinks that Congress isn't authorized to provide health care for their citizens:

Frank: Do you think Medicare is unconstitutional, sir?

Teabagger: I think that Medicare needs to be reformed.

Frank: Do you think it's unconstitutional? You said that the Constitution doesn't give us the authority to do it, but Medicare was done. And, do you think Medicare is unconstitutional?

Teabagger: I think that Medicare needs to be reformed.

Frank: But you won't tell me whether you think it's unconstitutional, which you said--

Teabagger: I am not a Constitutional scholar-

Frank: Then why did you start off arguing about the Constitution?

That's really a fantastic exchange, where Frank digs an inch below the surface and finds nothing. He insists on having this questioner back up the rhetoric he cribbed off of Free Republic or wherever he got it, and the guy just couldn't do it.

And this is my favorite part:

Teabagger: Can you pledge to all of us here tonight, that if a new government single-payer system is instituted, that you will opt out of your Cadillac insurance?

Frank: Yes I am in favor of single payer, and that's why I like Medicare. (yelling) You act as if you people have discovered it is August. I have been a co-sponsor of the single payer bill, I think it would be better...

Teabagger #2: But we watch tapes of Obama and everyone else secretly say they're in favor of an eventual single pay system.

Frank: I haven't... sir, it's been 21 years since I've had a secret. (Laughter) And I don't have one now! You have discovered that I'm for single payer! I've been a sponsor of single payer for years!

What you see here is several things: 1) Rep. Frank is always in control; 2) he concedes nothing; 3) he allows his opponents to hang themselves with the outlandish logic of their own claims; 4) he knows when to throw in a well-timed bon mot. At one point, Frank says, "When you say things that people can't refute, they try to drown you out. That's understandable." That's someone who is confident in their beliefs. Democrats could learn something from that.

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Lis Wiehl tries to explain the Commerce Clause to O'Reilly on The Factor last night because the new talking point of the health care insurance companies...Republicans...FOX News...BillO the teabagger is just that, but he can't handle the truth, dammit. Bill, it's not lawyers that are the problem just because Wiehl interpreted it the way you hate.

It's this idiot op ed by two people that worked for Bush and Reagan that are saying individual mandates are unconstitutional and causing the real "nuts" to go off the deep end. And you can be sure that the rest of the right wing loons will be jumping aboard the crazy train with him.

Wiehl: Article one in the Constitution says the Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. That is anything that goes from one state to another.

O'Reilly: So what?

Wiehl: Health care itself may be local, your doctor may be in your state but medical supplies come to you the medical equipment, all of the things...

O'Reilly: Why can they make you buy anything?

Wiehl: Because they can regulate interstate commerce. Those things go through interstate, they can force you to...

O'Reilly: OK, I want the audience to know that this is total BS. This is why people hate lawyers, this is nuts. {} The government is saying you have to buy health insurance. You have to do it. I'm saying that's unconstitutional. The federal government doesn't have the power to force an American to buy anything.

The Supreme Court over the years has used this Clause on many, many rulings. We had to buy George W Bush, Bill. Oh, you liked him---never mind. That was a different clause.

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I'm shocked it's this high really.

A new PPIC Poll in California shows Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) job approval rating dropped to a new low of 28%.

The last time a California governor's approval rating was that low was in 2003 when then-Gov. Gray Davis faced a recall election and was in a budget standoff with the Legislature.
A record-low 14% of Californians believe the state is headed in the right direction.

Can we find out who the 14% are that believe CA is headed in the right direction.
Atrios reminds us about the media obbsession over Arnold.

It's important to remember just how large a role our Village media had in promoting Arnold back in the day.

I wonder how many people that wanted to change the constitution so the Terminator could run for president now are birthers.

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Judge Andrew Napolitano sat in as the guest host yesterday on Glenn Beck's Fox News show, and featured a segment devoted to the notion that the hate-crimes legislation currently before the Senate might somehow be abused to undermine Americans' free-speech rights. His guest was David Rittgers of the Cato Institute.

There is, however, a problem right off the bat with their thesis: The bill in question -- the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (LLEHCPA) -- contains specific language designed to ensure that the bill is never construed in such a fashion:

Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by, the Constitution.

Any honest discussion of this aspect of the legislation would have to bring this language into consideration -- but it's never mentioned by either Napolitano or Rittgers. Rittgers has written about it at Cato -- mostly objecting on the basis of concerns about federalism -- and similarly omits any discussion of the bill's actual language (which also explicitly recognizes the primary role of the states and local jurisdictions).

Watch instead what Napolitano and Rittgers do in the course of this discussion: they bring in a totally unrelated piece of legislation -- the "Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act", which is indeed highly dubious from a constitutional point of view -- as though it were part and parcel of the same hate-crimes legislation issues -- even though the two laws have nothing to do with each other.

And then they return almost seamlessly to the federalism and double-jeopardy issues around the LLEHCPA -- Napolitano just refers briefly to "this legislation," but it's quickly clear they're discussing not the Megan Meier bill, which does not raise such issues, but rather the LLEHCPA. It's all so muddied up that anyone watching the show could easily conclude that they're somehow packaged together.

Moreover, the double-jeopardy problems -- as we've explained in some detail -- are largely nonexistent, or rather simply reflect the ongoing debate over "dual sovereignty doctrine," which involves many more issues than merely bias crimes.

The ACLU strongly supports this bill, despite its usual concerns over double jeopardy, and if you look the bill's actual language, you can see why:

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Mark Levin is happy now that he's got a bestseller decrying the tyranny certain to descend upon America under liberal rule, which Sean Hannity touted on his Fox News show last night. The appearance produced some plum bon mots fresh from Planet Wingnuttia:

Levin: What's going on in this country is really anti-liberty. The president is -- you know, they just put Bernie Madoff away for life. The president's policies are Bernie Madoff times a thousand. He is taking a wrecking ball to this society.

Levin evidently seems to have conveniently forgotten that Bernie Madoff was an exemplar of the laissez-faire capitalism practiced by Republicans generally and George W. Bush particularly. This is essentially accusing the person in charge of cleaning up after a demolition with having wielded the wrecking ball in the first place.

Levin also keeps referring throughout to Obama and his policies as "something foreign" and claims that he's undermining the Constitution.

Levin also claims that Obama "wants to destroy the health-care system that most of us like."

Oh really? That must be so, if your definition of "most of us" is "less than 15 percent of the population".

I suspect "us" for Levin and Hannity is their little claque of right-wing pundits and wealthy Republicans, as well as Levin's perfervid readers who've been just as eagerly drinking the Limbaugh/Beck Kool Aid.

He wraps up with this classic bit of wingnuttery:

Levin: This president has some very bizarre and alien viewpoints, ah, that were -- that, that were, you know, he was indoctrinated with, and now that I believe that he really believes in, and advances. He is a -- he is about as left wing and about as radical as anybody ever to be in the Oval Office.

Hoo boy. Talk about bizarre and alien. It must be quite the interesting view, out there on Planet Wingnuttia.

Well, I'm just going to say it: Obama gives a very nice speech, but his plans worry me. Ever see "Minority Report," the movie with Tom Cruise? Set in the future, he works for the Department of Pre-Crime. The police use technology to predict who will commit crimes, and they arrest them before the crimes happen.

Don't pretty this up, folks. This is exactly the position Obama expressed in his speech today, and if we keep silent simply because he's a Democrat, well, we're not doing our job as citizens of this democratic republic.

I agree wholeheartedly with what Digby said:

I know it's a mess, but the fact is that this isn't really that difficult, except in the usual beltway kabuki political sense. There are literally tens of thousands of potential terrorists all over the world who could theoretically harm America. We cannot protect ourselves from that possibility by keeping the handful we have in custody locked up forever, whether in Guantanamo or some Super Max prison in the US. It's patently absurd to obsess over these guys like it makes us even the slightest bit safer to have them under indefinite lock and key so they "can't kill Americans."

The mere fact that we are doing this makes us less safe because the complete lack of faith we show in our constitution and our justice systems is what fuels the idea that this country is weak and easily terrified. There is no such thing as a terrorist suspect who is too dangerous to be set free. They are a dime a dozen, they are all over the world and for every one we lock up there will be three to take his place. There is not some finite number of terrorists we can kill or capture and then the "war" will be over and the babies will always be safe. This whole concept is nonsensical.

The real terrorists, I'm afraid, are the self-serving hawks who promise to explode a political dirty bomb in the halls of the capitol every time someone tries to be sensible about American foreign policy and national security. They are still running things. They have always run things. And the sorry fact is that their dominance is a decades long model of bipartisan comity.

Glenn Greenwald:

So now, we're going to have huge numbers of people who spent the last eight years vehemently opposing such ideas running around arguing that we're waging a War against Terrorism, a "War President" must have the power to indefinitely lock people away who allegedly pose a "threat to Americans" but haven't violated any laws, our normal court system can't be trusted to decide who is guilty, terrorists don't deserve the same rights as Americans, the primary obligation of the President is to "keep us safe," and -- most of all -- anyone who objects to or disagrees with any of that is a leftist purist ideologue who doesn't really care about national security.

In other words, arguments and rhetoric that were once confined to Fox News/Bush-following precincts will now become mainstream Democratic argumentation in service of defending what Obama is doing. That's the most harmful part of this -- it trains the other half of the citizenry to now become fervent admirers and defenders of some rather extreme presidential "war powers."

And Will Bunch sums up:

No matter how much Obama tries to blame this on the Cheney torture policies (which created that inadmissible evidence), two wrongs don't make a right. What he's proposing is against one of this country's core principles, which is habeas corpus. No matter how many guidelines that Obama and his administration try to impose, there is nothing in the Constitution that would permit the indefinite jailing of people "who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes" but who "nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States" -- nor should their be. Not even if we ever do develop the mind-reading powers of a "thought police."

This is why people need to keep the pressure on Obama -- even those inclined to view his presidency favorably. Because while clearly his overall approach to torture and detention issues are "on the right track" as opposed to the very "wrong track" of Cheney and Bush, it is so easy inside the Beltway to start veering off the rails. Making people accountable for the torture and Guantanamo debacles of the Bush years requires the American people constantly holding our new president accountable, too.