Whenever I see a news article containing the line:
Siding with the Bush administration, however, the Obama administration...
I get a little barfy. It gets worse:
The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight. In a court filing, the Justice Department also asked District Judge John D. Bates not to proceed with the habeas-corpus cases of three detainees at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Afghanistan.
We were told by the president that we could fight this war while adhering to our values. If that's not the case, we're owed an explanation from the president himself why he and Holder are appealing what amounts to basic habeas rights. Maybe this is overly dramatic to say, but in light of this appeal, the following section from the president's inaugural address has been tarnished:
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. [...] Our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
Dammit.
(Incidentally, while his reporting is as solid as always, I'm officially fed up with Glenn Greenwald crapping up his stuff by constantly hectoring and nagging other bloggers to be deliberately critical of the president (see UPDATE). I've written this before, but it bears repeating: Being critical for the sake of being critical is equally as dishonest as blind support.)