After two years of whining and hand wringing over the overreaching, civil-liberty destroying, policies of the previous administration, Barack Obama is working on an executive order that will reinforce and surpass them.  It’s the same strategy he employed when he expanded the Bush wiretap program, only now he’s applying it to the Guantanamo inmates.

According to the Washington Post, Obama is concerned that his efforts to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay are going to be undone by his own party.  His solution is an executive order embracing and expanding the powers claimed by Bush, giving himself the ability to hold terror suspects without trial, indefinitely.

Administration officials are claiming that Obama is already working on the language while quietly building support for the measure.  White House spokesman  Ben LaBolt disagrees, claiming that no such executive order has been drafted, and the president has not decided whether he wants to persue one.  Of course, It could be pointed out that LaBolt’s denial at least contains confirmation that the order is being considered, regardless of what stage he’s at in the writing process. 

The President once said  “I don’t want to be ambiguous about this. We are going to close Guantanamo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our Constitution.”  

Throughout the election, Obama and various civil liberties groups worked themselves into a lather claiming that George W. Bush had spent eight years trampling the Constitution by holding the Guantanamo detainees without trial.  Apparently, now that he’s president, Obama has decided to continue those same policies.  It’s now his turn to walk all over the founding document – he’ll just be hiding the inmates somewhere else. 

I’m sure the democrats are proud of all the “change” their new president has brought to the table, and are enjoying Bush’s third term.

-Robert Laurie

UPDATE:  For all of you emailing me the angry letters, calling this article speculative, etc.  Here’s my least favorite “journalist,” Rachel Maddow, discussing this matter about a month ago.  Obama’s executive order has been in the pipeline for some time.  If Obama-drones want to bury their collective head in the sand because they can’t stand the betrayal, fine, but to claim there is no evidence that Obama is working on this measure is pattently false.

If an idealogue like Maddow can see the hypocrisy, why are so many rank-and-file democrats having such a hard time?