I had hoped that Obama, as a law professor, would be able to wade into the Constitutional crisis created by the Bush administration and establish a functional framework.

No.

In typical Obama style, we've got the core of the Bush policy - indefinite detention without trial - with a few tweaks.

Apparently they've stopped torturing people. I feel like the real reason for that is because they've run out of people to torture. They're still detaining people forever without trial. In other words, there is no law. What protections exist in our system against the government seizing people off the street and torturing them and holding them indefinitely? I seriously don't see anything at this point.

Obama is keeping these people imprisoned without any charges, and then pointing to secret torture-obtained evidence to justify that imprisonment.  He's not even prosecuting them using torture-obtained evidence.  He's going beyond that:  he's imprisoning them without bothering to prosecute them, while his supporters publicly claim that we know they're guilty -- or "dangerous" -- by citing untested, unseen evidence that the government claims can't be used because it was coerced.

Greenwald persuasively argues that it would be better to present the evidence in these cases than to suppress is because it was obtained illegally. Allowing the evidence to be admitted won't reward the government for their illegal acts any more than not having a trial at all and just operating on a presumption of guilt does!

Perhaps the problem is of the other variety - that the evidence we have is a secret. We can't even show it to you.

Just trust us.

:-)

The "Bush-tortured" excuse for indefinite detention - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com