I share the outrage at what can only be called Obama's betrayal of the people who elected him, and most especially those of us who worked on his campaign.

But this isn't the end of the governmental secrecy thing, or the torture thing, etc. Just the beginning. Pressure will increase here and abroad, and eventually Obama will be literally forced to honor his campaign promises.

Wishful thinking, probably. But I'm by nature an optimist.

Did the Bush transgressions on the constitution go beyond the tipping point without a way back? Is having executive power and a path to keep it too enticing? How powerful are the forces of the status quo in the CIA, the military and finance?

Will Obama really work to restore the constitution?

These recent moves are not promising.

If an administration as popular as pond scum on the menu of your favorite French bistro can get away with it, then Obama can do anything he wants on this issue unless he is severely and relentlessly attacked every day in a manner that attracts MSM coverage. Sorry, that is the way it works.

I gave Mr. Obama the benefit of the doubt (arising from things like his support of the FISA legislation). I waited. I have seen. I know that having a new regime that is orders of magnitude more competent than the last regime is an improvement but having to call my government a regime rather than an administration isn't.

We starve, look at one another short of breath, walking proudly in our winter coats, wearing smells from lab'ratories, facing a dying nation of moving paper fantasy, listening for the new told lies with supreme visions of lonely tunes.

Some where, inside something there is a rush of greatness, who knows what stands in front of our lives, I fashion my future on films in space. Silence tells me secretly, everything, everything. Singing my space songs on a spider web sitar, life is around you and in you, answer for Timothy Leary, deary.

Let the sun shine! Let the sun shine in, the sun shine in!

If an administration as popular as pond scum on the menu of your favorite French bistro can get away with it, then Obama can do anything he wants on this issue unless he is severely and relentlessly attacked every day in a manner that attracts MSM coverage. Sorry, that is the way it works.

Whose responsibility is it to find a way to make that happen?

I am glad Keith has come around. I can start watching him again.

So, Gary Kamiya, would scathing criticism such as this be considered anti-government rhetoric?

Maybe Obama is trying to have these arguments knocked down by the courts. Maybe the only way to kill these theories once and for all is to make the arguments and then have a judge rule that they are nonsense and throw them out. Is that possible? Obama and Holder cannot say they want to lose or the courts would accuse them of misconduct. I really, REALLY, hope I'm right.

KO's attention to the recent Bushist positions taken by the Obama DOJ was indeed welcome, and since his reporting consisted largely of paraphrasing your article, you too deserve great credit here, GG.

Olbermann made the point that what seems to be going on is the new administration has found itself with "all these powers" that the last administration posited and the last Congress didn't stop, so maybe it's not all that surprising to see the Obama administration try to hold on to them whether or not they are really constitutional. Assuming, with the Framers, that this is really what's likely to happen, it is crucial that there be vocal, immediate and relentless objections lodged from all fronts.

It is now clear that it is too much to hope that Obama is going to wave a wand and "undo" all the most egregious and unconstitutional acts of the Bush administration. He may be accomplishing some good things, he certainly is a better bet to occupy the position than McCain would have been, he may even have good intentions but is getting and relying on bad advice. None of that really matters. What matters is that if Obama is going to allow his administration to advocate unconstitutional actions, he must be called to account.

Maybe, hopefully, if there is a way to raise enough serious objections to the type of constitutional attacks represented by the DOJ's immunity (and war crimes/torture) arguments, Obama may be forced to step out of the bubble of the self/bureaucracy-interested advice he plainly is getting, and it may be that President Obama can be persuaded to weigh the costs of ignoring constitutional obligations directly against the costs of adhering to them. This has not yet been done, it seems to me. The bureaucratic advice driving the bus so far is plainly "CYA" and little else, with the "ramifications" being assessed plainly limited to the comfort and security of those actually implicated in plainly illegal actions. If the President can be made to weigh that controlling motivation directly against the need for a Rule of Law, I really do hope and even dare to believe that Obama would reach the right result.

But he obviously is not going to do that unless he has to. The advice he appears to be accepting is premised upon the presumption that there will either be no appreciable objection, or that the objection will be "weatherable". That can't be allowed to happen.

Thanks to you, Glenn, and to KO for picking this up. Now many need to run with it. If Obama has a "secret plan", let's hear it. But if, as now appears much more plausible, he is being persuaded by his advisors that he can ignore these crucial issues, support unconstitutional usurpations of power and disregard clear constitutional obligations and massive governmental criminality because "he has a lot on his plate" so his actions here will be given a pass, he must be disabused of that notion.

Oh, and if Obama is doing this because he really, truly believes what he is allowing his administration to do in these respects is within constitutional authorization and consistent with the rule of law, then it really may be time to start mentioning the "I" word.