Andrew Cohen holds Obama responsible for Saturday night's insanity:
When President Obama let all those Bush-era officials off the hook, when he didn't push for indictments or even Congressional hearings on the topic, he famously said that he wanted to look forward, not back, on the debate over torture. Even though some civil libertarians warned that such magnanimity would backfire on the president, Obama was generally heralded at the time for not putting the nation through the agony of serious self-reflection. Legal and political accountability took a back seat to convenience; we all took the easy way out.
Jonathan Bernstein pushes back:
[Y]es, blame Obama for not addressing an issue he should have addressed, but do remember that controlling what the opposition says and believes is far beyond the powers of the presidency.
I understand Obama's reluctance to open up what would have been a titanic political struggle upon coming into office. But the truth is: war criminals are still walking around with impunity, in violation of the United States' adherence to the Geneva Conventions. And the attorney general has decided not to enforce the rule of law on the elites, while enforcing it on the underlings. Glenn Greenwald has a point.
The Dish 