So, where is the Congress?  Where is the pushback?

I have to say that it also makes me wonder what Dawn Johnsen is thinking about all of this, and why her nomination continues to linger in committee without, as near as I can tell, any particular support or arm-twisting by the president who nominated her.

Obama owns this policy now.  He owns Gitmo, owns the protection of the Bush administration from accountability on torture, owns the whole mess.  This is no longer about the bad Bush policy that he ran against - this is Obama policy now.

It's not a pretty story. And it's only going to get worse.

It's not for nothing that Goldman Sachs gave Obama more than $900,000 - a small part of the astonishing $38 million Obama got from the finance, insurance and real estate industries ("FIRE") during the last election cycle. It's not for nothing that Obama got three-fourths of his campaign cash from people giving more than $200 (the same big donor percentage as George W. Bush in 2004), set new records in corporate election funding and achieved a level of corporate media love that remains almost beyond belief.

Beyond Surprise and Disappointment: Previous Warnings and a Teachable Moment

Infuriating as these policy actions (and inactions) and this corporate sponsorship may be to people of the actual Left (a different category than the broad-brush "Left" used in "mainstream" U.S. media), however, serious progressives have no business being surprised or disappointed by Obama's presidential trajectory. Candidate Obama made his "deeply conservative" [10] corporate-imperial centrism clear to those willing to undertake elementary investigations of his political and ideological record. As Scott Horton noted last March on Antiwar.com, "those who bought into the slogans `Hope' and `Change' last fall should have read the fine print. We were warned."[11]

There's another and better (or at least more pleasing) reason, moreover, for radicals to temper their angst over the "betrayals" and other transgressions of the new White House. There is something to be gained on the longer path to radical change from experiencing all this terrible if predictable - and in fact predicted - policy under the nation's new chief executive.

The dawning Age of Obama is potentially a great "teach-able moment" for left thinkers, communicators, activists who are ready and willing to take up the challenges of productive and progressive demystification and rebellion.

The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, a former McCain aide, is someone who believes that the President possesses what he calls "near dictatorial power" when it comes to national security.  He has repeatedly praised Obama for maintaining Bush Terrorism policies.  But even Goldfarb is uncomfortable with Obama's assertion of "post-acquittal detention power":

I understand and respect the president's decision to disregard his left-wing critics and embrace the same policies of indefinite detention and denial of due process that made the Bush-Cheney administration so effective in preventing another terror attack. I support those policies because as illegal enemy combatants, terrorists have no right to due process. But, as Glenn Greenwald points out, there is something Orwellian about this administration's attempt to have it both ways -- to get the credit for putting detainees on trial only to disregard the outcome if they don't like the verdict. Obviously the Bush administration would have done the same if they thought for a second that they could get away with it. But even the Bush OLC wouldn't have dared suggest detaining individuals who had been acquitted on all charges.

As Ben Wizner's email in the prior update reflects, it's far from clear that "even the Bush OLC wouldn't have dared suggest detaining individuals who had been acquitted on all charges."  Still, if your assertions of executive power and denial of due process to Muslim detainees even make Michael "near dictatorial power" Goldfarb uncomfortable, that's a pretty compelling sign that you're way, way out there.

I think poor Mr. Goldfarb loves, loves, loves Obama's authoritarian attitude and policies, but feels guilty for "cheating" on the Bush administration by saying so - hence the pullback that doesn't make much sense.