Earlier today, one of our editors wrote about some surprising points of consistency between the Bush and Obama administrations in their techniques for fighting the War on Terror (even if the new president seems reluctant to use those words). Civil libertarian watchdog groups are furious with some of the recent actions (and non-actions) coming from the administration; Michael Ratner, a spokesperson for the Center for Constitutional Rights, told me he was “utterly shocked” by the new Department of Justice continuing a controversial interpretation of the state secrets privilege and said that President Obama was complicit in torture.

There is an interesting story developing, however, that should please these critics. Two major points of contention – the above-mentioned use of the states secrets privilege and the president’s unstated-but-implied unwillingness to investigate any possible abuses of his predecessor – are receiving real push-back in Congress. First, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) called for a “truth commission” to look into possible wrongdoing in the Bush Department of Justice, despite the Obama administration’s preference for “looking forward.” A few days later, Sens. Leahy (D-VT), Specter (R-PA), Feingold (D-WI), Kennedy (D-MA), Whitehouse (D-RI), and McCaskill (D-MO) cosponsored legislation to narrow the use of state secrets, something many saw as a direct response to Obama’s invocation of the privilege. Note that this legislation is bipartisan and cosponsored by some of the most well-known and respected members of Congress.

Obama’s agenda in most ways is almost identical to that of the Congressional Democrats. Even the stimulus package, which the administration let leaders of Congress write almost entirely by themselves, ended up being impressively similar to the makeup of the legislation Obama had proposed months earlier. In this area, however, there seem to be genuine disagreements.

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