It has become increasingly hard to support the Obama administration and their promise of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ in the face of their ‘pragmatic’ approach to the issues they have faced.  The most glaring offenses in my opinion, have been in the handling of the prisoners of our country’s war on terror and the Obama administrations protection of Bush era officials and in many cases the continuation of their policies.  In this blog written by Andy Worthington for The Smirking Chimp on October 14 of this year, Mr. Worthington explores the issues of the violation of the prisoner’s rights and the Obama Administration’s rather frightening handling of them.  The Smirking Chimp is considered a left leaning blog and the audience that Mr. Worthington is writing for no doubt consists of those who feel as he does about torture and constitutional rights.  However, Mr. Worthington makes a very good argument about the legal and moral wrongness that has surrounded this issue.  Obama, instead of supporting the habeas corpus litigation initiated by the Supreme he initiated an interagency task force to review the cases at Guantanemo.  He writes of a particular prisoner Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, who was held on the basis of the flimsiest connection to Al-Qaeda.  Mr. Ahmed had in fact been in a Taliban prison for two years before he was taken into custody in 2002 by the Americans and held in Guantanemo until he was finally freed under President Obama, but only after the case was exposed in a US court.  His imprisonment was based on hearsay and association but Obama’s administration held him until this scandal was finally taken to court.  This kind of thing is just unacceptable and the fact that the Obama administration has not done a full house cleaning and removed all the people responsible for this kind of thing but has instead left them in positions of power is appalling.   Mr. Worthington references many other articles and blogs in his article, most of them actually referring to other blogs he himself has written.  This issue is obviously one he has spent a lot of time writing about and researching, and while he obviously feels very strongly about it, he has done his legwork and appears to know what he’s talking about.  He systematically goes through the policies of the Obama administration regarding this issue and finds that not much has changed from the Bush era.  Certainly Obama has protected those responsible for the war crimes that our country has committed and has changed very little regarding their approaches.  Mr. Worthington then goes so far as to say that Obama’s actions have gone even farther than that in his recently exposed use of drone assassins in Pakistan and his defense of plans to assassinate Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, suggesting that this protection has become important in his own plans for government.  Overall, I feel that Mr. Worthington has made a very compelling argument and agree with his trepidation in Obama's conduct concerning these issues.  We live in a country based on certain rights and these policies violate our rights and go against not only are legal system, but what I sincerely hope is our moral code as Americans.