“The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration’s expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush’s cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama’s cover-up.

We have had recent reminders of this dismaying retreat from Mr. Obama’s passionate campaign promises to make a break with Mr. Bush’s abuses of power, a shift that denies justice to the victims of wayward government policies and shields officials from accountability.”

‘To those who found President Obama’s speech underwhelming, Henry Louis Gates Jr. has some advice in The Root: Read it.

“We tend to forget that Lincoln’s most famous speeches-Gettysburg and the second inaugural-read much better than they sounded,” he writes. He admits, upon hearing Obama’s speech, that he found it “less moving as a rhetorical statement than I had expected.” Upon reading the speech, Gates Jr. found “plenty of grand significance. And as I reviewed the speech, Obama’s rhetorical strategy clearly revealed itself, a strategy brilliantly calibrated between progressive chords and conservative ones, revealing him to be the president of all the people, words designed to show that, as he put it, ‘What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them-that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.'” ‘ via The Daily Beast.

Maria Arana: “He is also half white.

Unless the one-drop rule still applies, our president-elect is not black.

We call him that — he calls himself that — because we use dated language and logic. After more than 300 years and much difficult history, we hew to the old racist rule: Part-black is all black. Fifty percent equals a hundred. There's no in-between.

That was my reaction when I read these words on the front page of this newspaper the day after the election: “Obama Makes History: U.S. Decisively Elects First Black President.”

The phrase was repeated in much the same form by one media organization after another. It's as if we have one foot in the future and another still mired in the Old South. We are racially sophisticated enough to elect a non-white president, and we are so racially backward that we insist on calling him black. Progress has outpaced vocabulary.

To me, as to increasing numbers of mixed-race people, Barack Obama is not our first black president. He is our first biracial, bicultural president. He is more than the personification of African American achievement. He is a bridge between races, a living symbol of tolerance, a signal that strict racial categories must go.”

If Obama Has to, Yes He Can. ” ‘Sorry, Mr. President. Please surrender your BlackBerry.’ Those are seven words President-elect Barack Obama is dreading but expecting to hear, friends and advisers say, when he takes office in 65 days.

…[B]efore he arrives at the White House, he will probably be forced to sign off. In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas. A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing president, but aides said that seemed doubtful.

For all the perquisites and power afforded the president, the chief executive of the United States is essentially deprived by law and by culture of some of the very tools that other chief executives depend on to survive and to thrive. Mr. Obama, however, seems intent on pulling the office at least partly into the 21st century on that score; aides said he hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American president to do so.” (New York Times )

“If you want to work for President-elect Barack Obama’s administration, be prepared to spill almost everything there is to know about yourself“

‘Sorry. No column today. The keyboard is not responding. History is a page being turned. Three words on the screen: “Yes we can.” While it is impossible to joke with genocide or disaster, it is equally impossible to joke with an event that makes you weep for joy. The first worldwide good news since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 needs more than a pirouette or an amused wink. At this moment – but for how long ? – we can say with far more conviction than on 11 September 2001 : we are all Americans.’ — Robert Solé (Le Monde Opinions via julia)

Michael Tomasky: “We are seeing, from (happily, at least for the time being) the majority of the country, much of what is good and decent about America in this election. But we are also seeing in smaller proportion what is chilling. The people in those videos have no proof to back up their beliefs, because of course no such proof exists. They just feel it, and that’s enough. But that isn’t what’s most disturbing. There will always be such people in all societies. What’s most disturbing is that McCain and Palin are egging them on.” (Guardian.UK)

Why Obama should release his righteous rage: “Obama has often said that he is running because of what Dr. King called ‘the fierce urgency of now.’ He needs to show that fierceness and that urgency. When we think of King, we usually think of him as resolute and dignified. But King was also filled with a prophetic anger, especially in the later years of his life. As a leader fighting for fundamental change in this country, Obama has to be willing to show us that kind of righteous anger. I don’t know about you, but when I think about what George Bush has done to this country — and what John McCain wants to keep doing — I consider outrage the only rational and legitimate response. The last seven-plus years demand more than a beaming smile.” — Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post)