I've written a great deal about Obama's broken promises to roll back the surveillance and security states, but nothing really drives home the discrepancy between Candidate Obama and President Obama on civil liberties as the old collection of clips Jon Stewart uses here. It's one thing to see Obama's old positions and actions in office in writing, on paper, and it's quite another to watch the president declare with all sincerity that he will "close Guantanamo, restore habeas corpus, say no to renditions, no to wireless wiretaps".
Since then the president has failed to close Guantanamo, and while the fault there lies in large part with a cowardly Congress, he has worked to deny habeas to detainees at Bagram who were captured outside of Afghanistan, said yes, please to warrantless wiretapping, and blocked scrutiny of renditions and denied restitution to those innocents who were rendered and tortured without cause.
This is a well-deserved skewering. It's too bad Stewart isn't as good at taking on lawlessness with a live target.
-- A. Serwer
