World-News

The American Prospect
by Bruce Ackerman

03/26/09

President Barack Obama started strong by announcing the end of torture and the closing of Guantánamo, but he has recently taken a more equivocal attitude toward the Bush constitutional legacy. While rejecting his predecessor’s extreme claims, he continues to assert the presidential power to hold terrorists without trial and to keep state secrets from the courts. And he has already issued his first signing statement denouncing a few provisions of the stimulus package as unconstitutionally limiting his executive prerogatives. … Barack Obama is no George W. Bush — he will indeed cut back substantially on unilateral assertions of power. The big question is whether he will take effective steps to prevent the next president from reversing course yet again and using the precedents of the Bush years as a springboard for even more extreme assertions of executive authority.”

http://tinyurl.com/cnjznn


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=torture
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Guantanamo
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=presidential+power
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=state+secrets
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=signing+statement
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=stimulus
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bruce+Ackerman