From Glenn Greenwald, thanks to a heads up from Andrew Sullivan:
Yesterday's vague and poorly-sourced Wall St. Journal article reporting that "Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies" is not, in my view, evidence of what Obama will do, but it is definitely compelling evidence that people close to him -- those whom he has chosen to be influential -- are pushing him in that direction. Notably, the article actually describes minor modifications to (as opposed to wholesale overhaul of) Bush's torture policies as the "centrist" and "pragmatic" approach.
It's just a fact that there are all sorts of people close to Obama who have enabled those Bush policies and who are mobilizing now and attempting to ensure that nothing meaningful occurs in these areas. It simply is noteworthy of comment and cause for concern -- though far from conclusive about what Obama will do -- that Obama's transition chief for intelligence policy, John Brennan, was an ardent supporter of torture and one of the most emphatic advocates of FISA expansions and telecom immunity. It would be foolish in the extreme to ignore that and to just adopt the attitude that we should all wait quietly with our hands politely folded for the new President to unveil his decisions before deciding that we should speak up or do anything.
Anything less than total revocation of Bush's policies on interrogation and spying is unacceptable. I'm fully with Sullivan on this one.
Oh, and about the "concern troll" noises coming from the right: Digby has a post that nails it.
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