Presuming the protocols of the last couple inaugurals remain, poles aren't allowed, so it'll take a bunch of hands to keep it aloft. Space first vcome first served, arrive way early so we can stake out the front row.

First, a substantial body of precedent (big enough to be both noteworthy and worrisome) has been built over the last 8 years both in the courts and out of them applying Bush/Cheney's dictatorial conception of the Presidency's powers.  Those precedents need to be removed and invalidated as much as - if not more than - the policies themselves.  They are like cleaning poison ivy out of your garden.  If you don't get the roots but merely cut down what's above ground, it will grow back.  When it grows back, it is often more vigorous than before.

For example - just one of them - look at the assertion which popped up yesterday, that Bushie might be able to successfully assert Executive privilege even after he leaves office.  That was the product of a hasty tactical approach by Harry Truman, post-leaving office, when he did not want to testify to the Republicans in Congress about something or other in the handling of the Korean War.  It flew.  Then, when Nixon used it post-resignation, everyone (Truman's lawyers included) recoiled.  Truman's lawyer (still alive now) recounted that his reaction was "My God, what have we created?"

So we need to go carefully and with a solid plan.

Second, and as (if not more) importantly, if we say Obama can just declare the Bush/Cheney doctrines invalid and be done with it, we wind up actually validating the animating principles of the Unitary Executive which Bush, Cheney and their enablers have posited and worked in.  That is, that the President can interpret the Constitution and laws as he sees fit, obey or disobey such statutes as he sees fit, and all the rest.  All those things which so shocked Sen. Whitehouse when he got to read some of the still-secret memoranda Bushie's OLC gave him.

So, I agree Feingold's a Hero of the Constitution and should get a big part of cleaning up the Bush/Cheney dictatorships' mess.  But this is seriously toxic waste we're working to clean up here, and we have to work carefully both to clean up all of it, and not make the future worse from how we get it cleaned up.

Eyes open and with a plan.  OK?

Step one of making a plan:  finding out what the lay of the land actually is.  And that's where immediate disclosure of the secret memos and projects can do the most good.  We all saw how assiduously the web (h/t TPM) was able to digest, analyze and organize all the documents that got dumped in the initial stages of the US Attorneys scandal (which, I suggest, is why the document dumps stopped).  It's time for that kind of effort again.

Oh, BTD - what would it take to get you to drop the "speaking for me only" line. I guess it bugs me as no one ever speaks for others. Are you not allowed to express an opinion at possible variance with the other bloggers here without labeling it so? How peculiar. I don't see you as being at variance with the others anyway.  Oh well.

Name: John O. Brennan

Being considered for: Director of national intelligence or the Central Intelligence Agency.

Carries as baggage: As a senior adviser to Mr. Tenet in 2002, Mr. Brennan was present at the creation of the C.I.A.'s controversial detention and interrogation program, which Mr. Obama has strongly criticized. But Mr. Brennan has distanced himself from the program, and told The Washington Times last month that interrogation methods like waterboarding are "not going to be allowed under an Obama presidency." During a confirmation hearing, he could face criticism by former C.I.A. officers that he was too risk averse in the hunt for Osama bin Laden while he served as station chief in Saudi Arabia.

Instead of placing the transition process under a seasoned professional such as Mr. Scowcroft, the Obama team has turned to discredited cronies of the Tenet era. Mr. Brennan, as chief of staff and deputy executive director under Mr. Tenet, was involved in decisions to conduct torture and abuse of suspected terrorists and to render suspected individuals to foreign intelligence services that conducted their own torture and abuse. Mr. Brennan had risen through the analytic ranks and should have known that analytic standards were being ignored in Mr. Tenet's CIA. He was also an active defender of the illegal program of warrantless eavesdropping, implemented at the National Security Agency under the leadership of Mr. Hayden, then director of NSA.

...

Mr. Obama will not be able to change the culture of the intelligence community and restore the moral compass of the CIA unless there is a full understanding and repudiation of the operational and analytical crimes committed in the Tenet era. If Mr. Obama genuinely wants to roll back the misdeeds of Vice President Dick Cheney, restore the rule of law at the CIA and create the change that Americans want and can believe in, he should not be relying for advice on the senior officials who endorsed these shameful actions.

Here's the list of the team leaders Obama's appointed for the transition, to review DoJ, Civil Rights, Legal Services Corp., and the FEC.

Thoughts?  (Other than "there are no criminal defense lawyers and no plaintiff's PI lawyers here".)