In the days between Christmas and New Year's Eve, Anthony Romero,
executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, sat at his
desk in Lower Manhattan and reached out to people who had lavished
generous donations on his organization during the long, benighted tenure
of George W. Bush. It was a heady moment: the era of Dick Cheney, John
Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales was winding to a close, and Barack Obama
was about to assume office, having vowed to rescind some of his
predecessor's more egregious assaults… more