After his first year, Obama shows his true face
By Nat Hentoff, Village Voice, January 12, 2010
Pat Benic/Newscom
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What a disappointment a year makes.
Before President Obama, it was grimly accurate to write, as I often did in the Voice, that George W. Bush came into the presidency with no discernible background in constitutional civil liberties or any acquaintance with the Constitution itself. Accordingly, he turned the “war on terror” over to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld—ardent believers that the Constitution presents grave obstacles in a time of global jihad.
But now, Bush’s successor—who actually taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago—is continuing much of the Bush-Cheney parallel government and, in some cases, is going much further in disregarding our laws and the international treaties we’ve signed.
Tags: CIA renditions, evidence of torture, George W. Bush, Jameel Jaffer, Obama administration, President Obama
