Referring to Bush 41 instead of Bush 43 was an intentional and fundamental decision made to support a desired future narrative, and the refusal to correct it is based on the recognition that exposure of the fabrication could damage the narrative.

The neocons both want to "minimize" their future burden over the disaster that has been Bush 43 and, for this story, they want to be able to blame the adverse Guantanamo ruling on vague accusations of judicial liberality that just won't wash in this case if it is noted that Judge Leon was in fact a 43 appointment and a dyed-in-the-wool kool aid drinker, to boot.

It is not unlike trying to suggest a lack of clarity in what "the Bush Doctrine" is or was -- facing the actual iteration of that aggressive doctrine could result in exposure to war crimes liability these days, so when referring to it now the neocons profess not to really know what was meant by it at the time....

If the Guantanamo release story can be spun to have been the aberrant decision of a weak judge appointed by the "regrettably spineless" Bush 41, then the story can be contained within the aberration framework and neocon guilt over the travesty of Guantanamo can be sidestepped. On the other hand, if it was a hard-line Bush 43 appointee who finally has acknowledged the Emperor's lack of clothes, there's a neocon failure in a spotlight. And, potentially worst of all: if TNR has to acknowledge that it was wrong in this attribution, and if people start thinking about why that might have happened in support of a plotline, then the plotline itself might become a "story". And that would really be a problem. So? Don't correct it, just move on. Next Thursday, they can refer to their prior story in support of the next layer of how the laudable goals of Bush 43 have been ill-served by weak appointees of insufficiently conservative presidents such as Bush 41 or Bill Clinton.

Instead of being shocked that a Brennan appointment became recognized as problematic and was derailed, I prefer to be reassured and grateful. The system worked because input was received and intelligently considered. That may be new given the past 8 years, but it is in fact what's supposed to happen.

Professor Turley said it best when referring to the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of habeas corpus and enforcement of the Constitution: "Even an idiot-proof system still has idiots" and the Court's ruling showed that the system could rise above them.

The Obama Administration won't be appointing Brennan to this important post, and for reasons both made clear and, to boot, not ignored. That's refreshing, it's damn near "change". Nice.

And thanks, Glenn, for your efforts and contributions on this one. Just don't be too obviously surprised when truth convinces power, or it may become even harder for it to keep doing so. Truth is supposed to convince power, especially in America, right?

And so begin the consequences of Congress' failure to rein in any of Bush's abuses of the Constitution in expanding the trappings of power claimed by the Executive Branch.

If all the crap Bush did to the Constitution escapes censure, as it has been suffered to do by the failure of Congress to impeach, is it really so surprising to see the next administration and its champions seek to push that expanded envelope in an effort to tie down loose ends which might interfere with executive power? Like, oh, the pesky disclosure of untoward information which might cast aspersions on the Executive?

This is not a surprise. It needs to be met head on, as Glenn is doing, but it is not a surprise.

Bush did all this torturing stuff, and a Democratic majority in Congress did nothing to call him on it.

So, let's see. Now there's a Democratic President coming in, with a solid Democratic majority. And, well, if Bush gave himself the option of doing whatever he damn well pleased and a Democratic majority in Congress did bupkis to stop him, exactly why should the leaders of the Democratic majority be seriously expected to take steps to remove from their new Democratic President's arsenal an apparent option to do, well, whatever he damn well pleases? That is, in essence, the kernal of Reyes' current change of heart -- give Obama the "tools he might need" in his discretion.

Isn't that just politics in a constitutional vacuum? This follows logically from Congress' abdication of constitutional responsibility and failure to impeach Bush. Ask them to be nice, sure. But somebody has to enforce something around here and, in the absence of that, this is exactly the political calculus that we should not be surprised to watch being played out for a while to come.