While everyone goes bananas parsing Sotomayor, let’s bring the conversation back to where Obama really really wanted to steer it from: Torture. (I promise more TK on Sotomaybe soon!)
Mr. Obama, the man who says one thing with the absolutist’s flare of a preacher, and then does exactly another with the politician’s manipulative triangulation, has come down here on torture and rule of law: in Bush Land.
O is keeping rendition alive and well. (On the stump, O spit at W’s renditions.)

O is keeping military commission trials open for business. (Yeah O spit at W’s commissions on the stump.)

O opened up classified torture memos for political purposes, then held back torture photo ops for the same reason. (Let the courts do the damage and Obama can claim a clean nose.)

O finds nice sounding euphemisms to make unlawful detentions of enemy combatants sound more palatable—his most recent being “Prolonged Detention” as though a grade-school gum-chewer must stay an extra half hour after school.

O understands these “prolonged detentions” caused W Supreme Court grief x 2, so O has decided to make up some new laws that will allow him to prolongedly {sic x2} detention those feisty may or may-not-be combatants.

O is digging in on illegal wire-tapping and no-penalty to those communications companies who assist the government with said illegal wire-tapping shenanigans. (Now doesn’t shenanigans sound much much better kiddies?)

O has decided to not say War on Terror, because even as he does what W did, it sounds bad to say it like W did. (I can’t recall the new O- term we are all instructed to use now, but let me know, will you.)

O told us closing Guantanamo would be a piece of cake, then had Congress take him to the Little Boy’s Room to remind him a Plan would be needed before they forked out a paltry 80 million to close things up. (Too BAD Congress didn’t do the same before giving Obama 634 Billion to fixeruper health care WithOut a plan!)

*O is fighting against habeas corpus for detainees at Bagram prison in Afghanistan—even those captured, say in Aruba, and flown to Bagram for detention. A federal court just ruled that Bagram prisoners captured in places Other than Afghanistan have habeas corpus rights—O says na-ah and is fighting the ruling.
And......
….in case you don’t remember…on the stump Obama loved habeas corpus for all, and condemned John McCain for his opposition to habeas corpus for all.

Here is what O said on the Stump after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of habeas corpus:

Today's Supreme Court decision ensures that we can protect our nation and bring terrorists to justice, while also protecting our core values. The Court's decision is a rejection of the Bush Administration's attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo - yet another failed policy supported by John McCain. This is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus. Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy.

And from Salon’s Glen Greenwald:

My, what a ringing and inspiring defense of habeas corpus that was from CANDIDATE Barack Obama. So moving and eloquent and passionate. And that George W. Bush sure was an awful tyrant for trying to "create a legal black hole at Guantanamo"

I really urge you all to read Mr. Greenwald’s
full article.
on this, as it goes on to show EXACTLY how passionately O LIED to us from the Senate Floor in 2006 as well! Remarkable really that anyone has the audacity to say O talks to us like adults—O lies to us like a sociopath—so convincing he probably believe his bullshit himself.

O has decided that it will be a great plan to infuse our prisons with enemy combatants.
(More on this to come this week!)

When Mr. Obama found out Big Bad Cheney was giving a speech, Obama rushed to go first, talking very nicely about the Rule of Law, restoring it and hoping the folks in America won’t notice he’s simply doing Bush, Obama Style.

As a matter of fact, as I thought about all O’s newfound love for W’s processes, I recalled something I read last February in the New Yorker. In an item titled “The Hard Cases” by Jane Mayer, a man I have little use for, said something very prescient when he was interviewed at the time of O’s Inauguration. Mr. John Ashcroft said, that:

in the end, President Obama’s approach to handling terror suspects would closely mirror his own: “How will he be different? The main difference is going to be that he spells his name ‘O-b-a-m-a,’ not ‘B-u-s-h.’ ”

And...here is something else from that New Yorker article:

As a candidate, Obama promised a sharp break with the Bush Administration’s counter terrorism policies. In a written statement for the Boston Globe, Obama, who taught constitutional law in the nineteen-nineties, said, “I reject the Bush Administration’s claim that the President has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants.”
In the Globe, Obama went on, “The detention of American citizens, without access to counsel, fair procedure, or pursuant to judicial authorization, as enemy combatants is unconstitutional.” In his Inaugural Address, Obama further underscored his differences with Bush in this area, saying, “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

When Cheney forced Obama to round up the cameras and give a speech on torture, Axelrovian said that Obama gave “a thoughtful speech that treated the American people like adults.”

I’d say the opposite. Mr. Obama is treating us like so many Children who ask too many pesky questions. Mr. O is sitting us down and lying to us in the same way a mother lies to a young child that asks touchy questions about sex—in the same way W lied to us about the run up to war. As a matter of fact the similarities between O and W are such good fun they hurt.

From the New York Times on Obama’s great shiny new plan to

“codify in legislation the Bush policies of indefinite detention without charge,” critics from the Center for Constitutional Rights say it is tantamount to simply “move{ing}Guantanamo to a ne location and giving it a new name.”

What rhythms with W? O- Yeah it does.
Selected links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/us/politics/23detain.html?scp=1&sq=oba...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/us/politics/22obama.html?scp=1&sq=obam...

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/02/23/090223fa_fact_mayer?curren...

*READ THIS:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/11/bagram/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/world/asia/25detain.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq...