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Today, leading Civil Liberties and Human Rights Groups met with President Obama to talk about the recent actions of the Administration in seeming to support Bush Administration policies and his continued reluctance to support investigations and prosecutions for War Crimes. Reportedly, the President was not pleased by the questions and comments he received from those attending and he continued to express his view that we need to move forward and not look backward. I think the statement of Jonathan Turley’s, in the above video from Keith Olbermann, says some of the most important things about the torture issue. If you’re a constitutionalist and believe in Open Society, there’s nothing more important than getting this done and restoring the foundations of Governance in the United States.
So, for us, the real “distraction” from the President’s efforts to get his very broad agenda passed is that he continues to block serious efforts in the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute alleged high crimes. This determination of his, coupled with his continual tacking toward the center on other issues creates both frustration and mistrust among some of his formerly most enthusiastic supporters. If this pattern continues we will see the beginning of new political movements in the netroots, dedicated to real change, by the Fall.