McClatchy: Can Barack Obama undo Bush's tangled legal legacy?

[babylonsister]

Can Barack Obama undo Bush's tangled legal legacy?

By Marisa Taylor and Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers



WASHINGTON — When Barack Obama becomes president in January, he'll confront the controversial legal legacy of the Bush administration.

From expansive executive privilege to hard-line tactics in the war on terrorism, Obama must decide what he'll undo and what he'll embrace.

The stakes couldn't be higher.

On one hand, civil libertarians and other critics of the Bush administration may feel betrayed if Obama doesn't move aggressively to reverse legal policies that they believe have violated the Constitution and international law.

On the other hand, Obama risks alienating some conservative Americans and some — but by no means all — military and intelligence officials if he seeks to hold officials accountable for those expansive policies.

These are some of the legal issues confronting him:

* How does he close the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba? He's pledged to shutter it, but how quickly can he do so when it holds some detainees whom no administration would want to release?

* Obama has declared coercive interrogation methods such as waterboarding unconstitutional and illegal, but will his Justice Department investigate or prosecute Bush administration officials who ordered or condoned such techniques?

* Will the new administration press to learn the full extent of the Bush administration's electronic eavesdropping and data-mining activities, and will it curtail or halt some of them?

* The Bush administration exerted tight control over the Justice Department by hiring more Republican-leaning political appointees and ousting those who were viewed as disloyal. Will Obama give the department more ideological independence?

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/55520.html

[chimpymustgo]

1. There is MUCH work to be done.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Question about this:

I thought the identity of Gitmos abductees was classified.


How can they determine there are people " whom no administration would want to release?"
if the abductees in Gitmo are unknown?

[crickets]

3. Good question. -nt

[strategery blunder]

4. Well, I can answer one of those questions

"* How does he close the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba? He's pledged to shutter it, but how quickly can he do so when it holds some detainees whom no administration would want to release?"

Umm. Providing material support to terrorists is illegal. Charge those "whom no administration would want to release" with federal crimes, and release the ones who were just turned in by their local warlords for the bounty and/or revenge.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. Providing material support to terrorists is illegal NOW, and the law is being mis-used.

Fortunately, laws can be changed.

[jmowreader]

9. Here's the problem with that...

Guantanamo is full of Iraqis and Afghanis. They're not subject to US laws unless they committed their crimes in the US. Anyone in that place that committed those crimes is going to have to be tried by a world court, not a US court.

I certainly have no problem with locking up terrorists--in fact, I'm all for it--but it's got to be done by an international tribunal, not a US one.

We're about ready to step into the la-la land of the Mariel Boatlift...Castro's way of fucking Jimmy Carter by sending all his worst criminals to South Florida. Cuba won't take them back, no other country will accept them and we can't let them walk the streets because they are very bad people...so they sit in a prison camp.

[kentuck]

5. Where should he start?

There has been so much damage done to our Constitution and our Bill of Rights.

[babylonsister]

7. That's right. He mentioned that uphill climb; he was right. nt

[ReadTomPaine]

6. Yes He Can. n/t