Obama denies terror suspects right to trial

At some point, the honeymoon has to be over. The low point during the Clinton administration, to me, came when Clinton and his deputies joined with Republicans and tried to enact what they called "welfare reform".

What worries us is the prospect of the new administration following the same harmful "triangulation" tack. Is President Obama going to be backtracking on any of the progressive ideals that he says are the points on his moral compass?

It's still too early too tell, but The Independent is reporting that basic due process rights are still being denied to alleged "enemy combatants".

Less than a month after signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, President Barack Obama has quietly agreed to keep denying the right to trial to hundreds more terror suspects held at a makeshift camp in Afghanistan that human rights lawyers have dubbed "Obama's Guantanamo".

The air base is about to undergo a $60m (£42m) expansion that will double its size, meaning it can house five times as many prisoners as remain at Guantanamo.

Apart from staff at the International Red Cross, human rights groups and journalists have been barred from Bagram, where former prisoners say they were tortured by being shackled to the ceiling of isolation cells and deprived of sleep..

While we at the Northwest Progressive Institute are generally supportive of Barack Obama, we'd rather we be the administration's conscience than the administration's cheerleaders. We cannot continue to imprison people under the wrongful presumption "guilty until proven innocent." Our new President should know better.