How the Obama administration took the national security surveillance, detention, and covert action apparatus it inherited from the George W. Bush administration and ended up keeping most of it. Guantanamo wasn’t closed because they didn’t act fast enough, and then Congress blocked the closing despite the harm to our reputation and national honor. But for the rest, Savage argues—surveillance and drone killings mostly—what the Obama policymakers had objected to in the Bush administration was the lack of legal authorization for these acts, the violations of existing laws or actions outside statutorily granted authority. Whether you think this is ironic or not, the Obama administration’s focus on lawfulness rather than human rights meant that they ended up institutionalizing many of the biggest expansions of the national security state by seeking formal methods and procedures for overseeing, but not blocking, these exercises of executive power. ( )