Pretty much every liberal commentator I see has criticism of Obama for his not providing enough 'change' from the Bush administration on these matters.
I wonder if you read them - given that the article you selected is the right-wing nutty WSJ editorial board. Try
www.commondreams.org for far better commentary.
For one example, the excellent Glenn Greenwald, who was a national leader on the Bush abuses, has been quite critical of Obama on this.
Now, we do have to say, it's not like Bush was Hitler in the sense that you have to simple oppose every detail of his policies - and even Hitler that wasn't the case.
There are going to be some 'extreme situation' measures the President has - the thing was, the Bush administration appeared quite willing to use those as far more common, to set precedents that led to the potential for the mass detaining of American citizens who tried to protest, for example - not that much of what he actually did wasn't way over the line.
I think what people want is some stronger checks on the president in *abusing* those powers.
Frankly, among many examples, the wholesale 'purchase' of prisoners, such as paying $5,000 to Afghan warlords for whoever they cared to hand over, creating thousands of prisoners with effectively no real evidence against them, able to be detained indefinitely, was a travesty.
It reminds me a little of how the Israeli Supreme Court, faced with the issue of the IDF wanting to use physical abuse, carved out a tiny exception for some physical coercion only in a ticking-bomb scenario - and the IDF quickly began using it on thousands of detainees without any such situation, as a regular practics, they could not keep the 'genie in the bottle' once they cracked the door.
So the test for Obama isn't quite that he simply repudiate anything the Bush administration did, but that he repudiate the power grab doctrines and create better limits.
IMO, noi torture at all, no indefinite detention without a fair trial (not just a mioitary tribunal), etc.
I think we may have to review some of the historical 'exceptions' and precedents in light of the potential for abuse by another Bush, and try to prevent abuse.
However, public opinion has little to say about this; Justice Department opinions can shift president to president, there are always John Yoo's, and the final say on the constitution's limits is the Supreme Court (currently stacked with some extremists appointed by people named Reagan or Bush), who rules after the abuses occur - and are faced with the doctring of Bush that the Court has no say in restrcting his authority. If you want to think Ginsburg is going to get a gun and go enforce her decision against the military practices...
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