Obama has not fixed all the constitutional wrongs of the Bush administration yet. Shame on him. Is there anyone saying that he isn't trying at all? Well, no, not really, there has been measurable progress, that's beyond dispute. The debate here and from the Left is whether the progress is "decisive" enough.

If "decisive" is the question, then it seems only fair to put what Obama has to deal with in context: CAN he, alone, "decisively" put a stop to the most odious constitutional derelictions of the Bush administration? Of course not. If President Obama were to announce that, as a matter of his personal views, his Presidency renounces X or Y "assertion of constitutional authority" by Bush, that has no greater precedential value upon the future of the United States government than the length of his term. Seriously.

As a "final resolution" of the "enemy combatants treatment" problem, I don't like the Obama Administration's recent pronouncement because it's not final. But what the Obama Administration actually announced is both a huge step forward and a plainly non-final invitation to elicit an actual resolution of an outrageous constituional challenge posited by the Bush administration on this point. The Obama Administration refuses to claim, as Bush claimed, that imagined "inferences" in the United States Constitution allow the President, acting alone, subjectively and in private, to detain and hold without charges individuals which the President suspects of being unfriendly to the United States. Instead, though still disappointingly, the Obama Administration suggests such authority is "implicit" in an act of Congress and existing international treaties.

This is HUGE, however. It doesn't end anything, as a practical matter, and is therefore disappointing to be sure and continues to be tragic for those incarcerated for far too long by Bush's previous contumacy. But from the perspective of the functioning of America's constitutional democracy, Obama's decision makes the following possible: First, it allows the focus of the detention litigations to shift to the nature and intent of the congressional legislation. It should be expected that those ably representing detainees in their quests for fair treatment will not take long to mount a challenge to any suggestion that Congress intended to grant the President the authority to suspend the Constitution and related principles of justice and military conduct by authorizing use of force in 2002; I, at least, have never heard it suggested that the legislative history of that act would support such a reading. Second, knowing the risks presented by such a judicial analysis of congressional intent and existing military and international law principles, Congress (a Congress in which the most malevolent Bushites are being rapidly marginalized into triviality) will have motive and incentive promptly to address this problem either as, or after, the courts get the opportunity to force Congress' hand (in an environment now devoid of Bush's pernicious "trump card" constitutional crap).

What could actually come of this? Congress might actually get to pass legislation which makes it clear what the rules are and, from a constitutioinal perspective, makes it clear what the rules will be going forward -- in other words, establishing that if some future president takes a position similar to that brazenly boasted by Bush, impeachment will follow. Congress could actually get the opportunity to correct what the last Congress' abject failure to impeach Bush left hanging over this country's future in this respect.

Obama isn't thinking that far ahead? Bullshit. And even from a merely base "pragmatic" perspective, it's plain that at the very least the Obama Administration's policy pronouncement buys them time to try to figure out how to "not just unlock the prison door" while further wrangling proceeds -- an obviously "non-pristine" side effect but one which keeps "potentially dangerous" persons incarcerated while the Administration and Congress tries to figure out how really to deal with what the Bush administration left on the doorstep.

No, the recent pronouncement that the Obama Administration won't claim unilateral authority to detain persons as "enemy combatants" doesn't go nearly far enough. But it might facilitate going far enough. And it could get us there without leaving the future clouded, and it could get us there while also laying groundwork for Congress to do it's damn job and enforce the Constitution in this, and other, fundamental respects laid waste by the Bush Administration. And those who think Obama alone has the responsibility to do that all by himself are shortchanging the individual, the Constitution, and themselves. This is not an abstract principle, it's a real problem.

Every AIG executive who thinks he or she should receive a bonus should be required to appear before the congressional oversight committee and explain the transactions he or she was involved in, who the parties were, what the terms were, what the result has been, and why they believe they should get a bonus out of that package of deals.

And that was what George W. Bush said in 2004.

So as we all watch Obama's first 100 days unfold, isn't it kind of fun to see how the Rethugs have gone from "Just Say No/Tax Cuts Only", to "He's trying to do too many things at once", to "I've fallen and I can't get up"? Really, can their marginalization of themselves get any more pathetic than the time spent in a national side-debate over the role of Rush Limbaugh and the current debacle of Steele?

It's like watching Mike Meyers trying to "not look at the mole" in the Austin Powers movies.

Meanwhile, Obama should proceed to try to fix everything simultaneously. Who in the Republican Party will be seriously listened to in opposition? And for those who think that's undiplomatic of him, quote GWB's wholly unhinged arrogance back at them. All Obama did was win a decisive victory as the Rethugs imploded, crashed and burned. Now, in the words of Crocodile Dundee, "THAT'S a knife."