On a more serious note, Obama's defense of his civil-liberties record deserves more scrutiny. Here's what he told Rolling Stone:
When people start being concerned about, "You haven't closed Guantánamo yet," I say, listen, that's something I wanted to get done by now, and I haven't gotten done because of recalcitrance from the other side. Frankly, it's an easy issue to demagogue. But what I have been able to do is to ban torture. I have been able to make sure that our intelligence agencies and our military operate under a core set of principles and rules that are true to our traditions of due process. People will say, "I don't know — you've got your Justice Department out there that's still using the state secrets doctrine to defend against some of these previous actions." Well, I gave very specific instructions to the Department of Justice. What I've said is that we are not going to use a shroud of secrecy to excuse illegal behavior on our part. On the other hand, there are occasions where I've got to protect operatives in the field, their sources and their methods, because if those were revealed in open court, they could be subject to very great danger. There are going to be circumstances in which, yes, I can't have every operation that we're engaged in to deal with a very real terrorist threat published in Rolling Stone.
It's true that Republicans have shamelessly demagogued the issue of Gitmo, suggesting that terrorists would be roaming the streets if the detention camp were closed, and that they really have no detention policy to speak of. But it's also true that the administration has failed to consolidate support among quivering, fearful Democrats, who have repeatedly denied the executive branch funding for Gitmo's closure.
As for "due process," that's really debatable. The military commissions were revived and have proved as dysfunctional as their previous incarnations. While I've defended the administration's decision not to prosecute individual CIA agents who stayed within the torture guidelines approved by the Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel, the decision to "look forward" and shield the architects of the torture program from any kind of legal accountability is indefensible -- the apocalyptic political scenario of complete Republican obstructionism came to pass anyway. Other efforts at shielding the intelligence community from accountability have also been successful -- the administration recently defeated a proposal to have the Government Accountability Office audit the performance of intelligence agencies. Who cares that we're throwing $75 billion into a Top Secret America roughly the size of a major American city?
The notion that the Justice Department isn't using a "shroud of secrecy to excuse illegal behavior on our part" is laughable, if only because the administration is currently using the state-secrets doctrine to block judicial review of the administration's targeted-killing program. Even if you support the policy and think it's ultimately legal, there's no way to know because the administration says the courts shouldn't even be allowed to take a look.
