Bush's land mines for Obama

By GottaLaff

BushCo is embarrassed by a federal judge once again, which brings up a familiar, broader topic (below):

A federal judge has ordered the release of five Algerian terror suspects who have been held without charges almost seven years at Guantanamo Bay.

In the first civilian court ruling for terror suspects challenging their detention, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said Thursday that the five men could not be held indefinitely as enemy combatants. [...]

CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen says the suspects in question are not the dangerous terrorists the Bush administration has been warning Americans about since 9/11. He added that the ruling would also not set a legal precedent for releasing suspected terrorists who are a true threat. [...]

"The men aren't going to be immediately released," Cohen says. "We are going to see a whole new round of appeals now and it's not at all clear that the appeals courts are going to see this issue the way the trial judge did.

"Still, it's an embarrassing if not unexpected blow to the White House and the Pentagon. But it's also a highly symbolic ruling - the first time the courts have ordered the release of Gitmo detainees over the objections of the government - since a Supreme Court ruling last year that permitted this sort of judicial review."

How many of Bush's little doings will be upheld, and how many will be reversed, now that Obama is the president-elect?

[R]ules can be enacted by the outgoing Bush administration with relative ease and speed, but reversing them will be far more difficult for the Obama administration: extensive study, notice and comment requirements mean that reversals may take several years, during which a lot of damage will have been done.

Bush also has signed more than 250 executive orders since taking office. Some are innocuous; others, not so much (permitting the use of interrogation techniques most experts consider torture, for instance). Some are still classified. The Obama transition team will need to go through these with a fine-tooth comb, identifying executive orders that require immediate change or reversal.

Even more complicated, Justice Department lawyers in hundreds of pending cases are still advancing the legal theories developed by the Bush administration's political appointees. The Obama team will need to carefully review every case. (Otherwise, imagine the mess if President Obama announces on Jan. 21 that his administration will never sanction torture, but lower-ranking career lawyers in the executive branch continue, in pending litigation, to advance the same old Bush administration arguments defending "enhanced interrogation.")

The administration also appears to be seeking the last-minute conversion of some political appointee job slots to career civil service positions. If Bush appointees can "burrow" into the civil service, Obama is more or less stuck with them.

And finally, a point I've made repeatedly, as did Paddy earlier today:

This, incidentally, is why -- contrary to some net-roots hopes -- Clinton administration veterans also won't be going gently into that good night. "Change" is great, but it is difficult to implement when you're constantly stepping on bureaucratic land mines. Obama needs people who understand the federal rule-making process, who know why the Office of Management and Budget can halt the secretary of State's best-laid plans, who know which obscure Justice Department offices are the likely repository of crucial information, and who can undertake a rapid bureaucratic de-mining operation. And virtually the only Democrats under 65 who know these things are Clinton administration veterans.

Patience.