As one of the 1,200-plus signatories to the full-page ad that appeared in The New York Times, calling for the closure of Guantanamo, I was disappointed in President Barack Obama’s speech Thursday on counterterrorism, drones and Guantanamo.

Torture and Indefinite Detention at Guantanamo

While promoting the message to Close Guantanamo that we are raising funds to publish in The New York Times, we  have been hearing, especially in the Twitterverse, that people think, because Obama promised to close Guantanamo, and says that Congress is not allowing him to do that, the main problem is with Congress.

There are steps President Barack Obama could take right now to expedite the closing of Guantanamo Bay prison camps, where prisoners currently engaged in a major hunger strike continue to be held in detention. Yet, Obama and his defenders insist Congress is solely responsible for why the prison continues to be open and why prisoners cleared for release have not been freed.

Here is the memo.  With a few tweaks and a more creative title -- like "Murder With Your Hands Clean" -- this memo could sell a lot of copies.

And why not?  Either there's a whistleblower in the Department of So-Called Justice about to be charged with espionage, and NBC is about to face the same persecution as WikiLeaks, or this is one of those "good" leaks that the White House wanted made public in an underhanded manner -- perhaps as an imagined boost to morality-challenged CIA director nominee John Brennan who faces his Senate Rejection Hearing on Thursday.

by Glenn Greenwald

For the the last four years, Barack Obama has not only asserted, but aggressively exercised, the power to target for execution anyone he wants, including US citizens, anywhere in the world. He has vigorously resisted not only legal limits on this assassination power, but even efforts to bring some minimal transparency to the execution orders he issues.

by Dennis Loo

Jack Goldsmith, former Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel from 2003-2004 and who is currently a Professor at Harvard Law School, writes on November 9, 2012:

by Jason Hirthler

Delusions of the Liberal Intelligentsia
As we head into The Chosen One’s second term, it might be useful to explode a few of the chronic myths that cling to the man more tightly than his shadow. Myths that have helped liberal intelligentsia justify its enthusiastic support for this lesser of two evils. Here are the myths as articulated by a young, imaginary, and starry-eyed Obama progressive, momentarily detached from the stampeding liberal herd, just long enough to have a conversation with a leftist on the political fringe…

from Revolution Newspaper

Will he stop the American bombing from pilotless "drones" that he has ordered to be rained down on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and who knows where else? Or will he continue this practice and others like it—and worse yet, will he now follow through on his threats of war against Iran for getting in the way of America's imperialist objectives in that part of the world?

by Dennis Loo

Most of the commentary about Obama’s re-election and the defeat of some of the most reactionary GOP incumbents and candidates such as Rep. Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock has been about how the GOP is demographically and ideologically far too right wing for the majority in the electorate.

by Kevin Gosztola

The slogan of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign was “Forward.” As progressives and others celebrate his victory, they need to take a moment to soberly reflect on the reality that his second term will be marked by advancing policies that he helped institutionalize or allowed to become further entrenched—some of which picked up on expanding executive power where President George W. Bush left off in 2008.

Did the election season leave you cold? Are you yearning to find people you can talk seriously with about the big problems that the major political parties all seem to avoid? If so, you're not alone. Yesterday, in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, one the worst natural disasters ever to hit the U.S., people went out to cast their vote and many of them felt resigned to the fact that their vote wouldn't make the world better -- that they were just choosing the "lesser" of two evils. And many refused to do that.