The subset of the lawyerly elite who happened to be Democrats became apoplectic when the Bush administration held POWs at Gitmo (without trials!), used water-boarding (on a few), and did whatever they wanted to in order to prosecute their wars. And now? Well now that they're in power they've pulled an Emily Litella on all that shit.
Since taking office the Obama administration did stop with the water-boarding stuff it's true but they escalated things by starting to do targeted killings of terrorists some of whom were American citizens, and Gitmo remains open for business .) It now seems to Obama that the Bush-era executive war powers excesses are somehow okay now that they're the ones doing it. Lawyers that once condemned Bush as a constitution shredding maniac are now writing legal memos justifying the use of the same measures that Bush used and even worse they are presenting them with a straight-faced seriousness that defies understanding. And those of us who opposed all of this when Bush did it (and still oppose it now as well) are ridiculed as isolationists, legal nit-pickers, and worse! Go figure?
Well that was then, and this is now you see.
