"'Ya Want Change With That Legal Brief, Sir ? ? ? ? "

If the Obama administration's stance on legal matters is any indication, the "change" they're offering is mainly pocket change.

Yeah, yeah, yeah I know what you're thinking: "But if you consider the alternative, he's head and shoulders above. They would have been disastrous!"

Consider these quotes from the article below, however:

President Barack Obama is morphing into George W. Bush;
Obama's legal arguments repeatedly mirror Bush's;
this administration's legal arguments have blended into the other;
Obama has come to emulate Bush;
he's following Bush's lead in defending in court the federal marriage law;
The Obama White House has followed suit;
The Obama White House, so far, takes the same view;
The Obama administration now agrees;
as Obama follows the Bush lead;
The Obama administration now says the same.

From McClatchy yesterday:

In stark legal turnaround, Obama now resembles Bush
Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers | June 19, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is morphing into George W. Bush, as administration attorneys repeatedly adopt the executive-authority and national-security rationales that their Republican predecessors preferred.

In courtroom battles and freedom-of-information fights from Washington, D.C., to California, Obama's legal arguments repeatedly mirror Bush's: White House turf is to be protected, secrets must be retained and dire warnings are wielded as weapons.

"It's putting up a veritable wall around the White House, and it's so at odds with Obama's campaign commitment to more open government," said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a legal watchdog group.

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Whatever the reasons, policy persists.

The Bush White House sought to keep e-mails secret. The Obama White House has followed suit. The Bush White House sought to keep visitor logs secret. The Obama White House, so far, takes the same view.

Petaluma, Calif., resident Carolyn Jewel and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a legal activist group, sued the Bush administration over warrantless wiretaps. The Bush administration said that the lawsuit endangered national security. The Obama administration now agrees.

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An ACLU lawsuit, initially filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., contends that the Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan knowingly supported a CIA operation that flew terrorism suspects to brutal overseas prisons. The Bush administration invoked the "state secrets" privilege in an effort to stop the suit.

"Further litigation of this case would pose an unacceptable risk of disclosure of information that the nation's security requires not be disclosed," the Bush administration declared in a legal filing on Oct. 18, 2007.

The Obama administration now says the same, after a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled April 21 that the case could proceed.

"Permitting this suit to proceed would pose an unacceptable risk to national security," the Obama administration declared in a legal filing June 12.

For both arguments, the two administrations relied on the attestations of the same man: former Bush CIA Director Michael Hayden.

You need to count your "change" the next time a vote is cast.

I seem to be missing some of mine . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)