Second in a series. This one takes Obama's DOJ arguments at face value, and says he's put himself on the wrong side of a most important line and should be called on it with loud voices of protest. Tomorrow's installment offers a possible more benign interpretation.

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<strong><em>Sunday, while reading about the terrible Bushite policies that Obama's DOJ is arguing in support of, and even in some instances extending --<a href="click here I crossed an emotional line:  I went from strong Obama supporter with some concerns to a feeling of anger and protest against Obama.

And I began to write what you'll find here below.

As you can see here tomorrow, as I was in full protest mode, coming to the end of expressing this line of thought, I was suddenly hit with an idea that MAY put all this in a different, more positive light.

But that's just a maybe, and I'm in no way prepared to abandon the message I deliver here now:  that Obama's policies on these matters are not acceptable and that he should be pressed on them.</em>

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Obama should be pressed on this-- on his adoption of lawless, usurpatious Bushite legal assertions.

It's not just that these policies are wrong.  They are wrong on the very sorts of things that were most central to the Bushite evil, the very sorts of assaults on the constitutional balance of powers and other protections that our Founding Fathers were most concerned about.

When the very same people who were most eloquent and reasoned in denouncing Bush's lawlessness --people like Glenn Greenwald and Bruce Fein-- are moved to write about Obama's policies in the very same way, then it clearly is time for people (like me) who have seen Obama as the one to rescue us from that Bushite darkness to take another look, and to raise our voices.

I want Obama to be pressed on this.

I want a reporter at a presidential news conference to ask Obama:  [contest:  just how should that question --that "what the hell are you up to" question-- be worded?]

And I want people like us to stand up and call him on this.

Obama has placed himself on the wrong side of a most important line.

I liked being Obama's guy, his ally, seeing him as the torch-bearer, the vessel carrying forward the cause of the light in pushing back the forces of darkness.  I liked devoting my energies to supporting him in the transformational presidency he seemed to promise.

But, with the way he's sending his DOJ lawyers into court to defend Bushite usurpations, he's failing to give us the most crucial transformation --the restoration of the Constitution-- that we need.

If we have to choose between supporting Obama and defending the Constitution, it is the Constitution to which we should give our allegiance, even at the cost of opposing Obama.  For --as argued during the Bushite era-- it is the Constitution (and the rule of law) from which all our other blessings flow, and on which everything else depends.

<em>[It was at this point in my writing that an idea came to me-- a conception of a strategy that might put all this in a rather different light.  That will be the subject of tomorrow's posting.]</em>

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Authors Bio:
Andy Schmookler, an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher, was the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia's 6th District. His new book -- written to have an impact on the central political battle of our time -- is WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST. His previous books include The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, for which he was awarded the Erik H. Erikson prize by the International Society for Political Psychology.