Obama Finding tough Fight in Court over Exec. Power

President Barack Obama’s claims of broad executive authority to carry out the war on terror are drawing fire from an unexpected source: federal judges nominated by President George W. Bush, who asserted the sweeping powers in the first place.

In recent weeks, three different Bush appointees considering cases relating to war-on-terror detainees have rejected arguments from Obama’s Justice Department, which adopted virtually unchanged the positions the Bush administration had staked out.

In each case, the Bush-appointed judge said the executive branch was overstepping its authority and claiming more powers than the law allowed.

“It took a while for the courts to turn on George Bush. Obama’s not getting that same period,” said Jonathan Turley, a liberal legal analyst at The George Washington University

. “The fact that these are Republican appointees tends to add an exclamation point to their decisions.”

“Even Republican judges are seeing through the arguments and the idea that the war on terror justified depriving prisoners of constitutional protections,” said Jonathan Hafetz of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The irony, of course, is that Democrats railed against Bush for what many saw as a power grab in the months and years after the Sept. 11 attacks — when Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney asserted vast executive branch authority to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and to hold prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. In the years since, courts from the Supreme Court on down have begun to pare back that authority, saying in several high-profile rulings that Bush overstepped his bounds.

Since taking office, Obama has adopted many of these broad claims to executive authority as he’s inherited the war on terror from the past administration — but he is now facing some of the same legal constraints that Bush began to encounter in his closing years in office, sometimes in sharply worded decisions that show some courts have decided it’s time to rein in executive power. - Politico Story

It is pretty ironic that Obama spends so much time bashing on Bush for his war on terror, then he adopts the same policy. What the heck is that?

It is only fitting that he is being thwarted by the courts, the Bush Courts. We all heard him say how he would CHANGE, well they are holding you to it. Now is the time for the two faces to morph into one, and decide what you are going to do Mr. President.

You can't preach one way, then do it the opposite. Make a decision and stick to your guns.