I know that I'm not alone in wishing that Obama were moving more quickly to erase the stain that the Bush-Cheney excesses left on our national honor. I wish Guantanamo were already closed -- but Obama did set a date certain for shutting the place down and pledges to follow through. I'm troubled that he hasn't flatly rejected the concept of indefinite detention -- but he at least recognizes that some kind of due process needs to be involved.
I'm most troubled by Obama's resistance to a full-bore investigation of the Bush-Cheney transgressions. I can only hope that the president sees the error of his ways -- or at least that the probe of CIA interrogation abuses that Attorney General Eric Holder might launch is allowed to follow the evidentiary trail to whatever crimes it may reveal.
But that was then, and this is now, you say. Bush and Cheney are history. They were going to leave office in January anyway, no matter who replaced them.
That's true. But witness Sarah Palin's weird near-daily eruptions -- about imaginary death panels and the like -- and reflect on what the summer would have been like if she were serving as vice president of the United States.
I don't know about you, but I'm feeling much better about everything.
It'll take years to clean up the mess those children left behind.
