Basically, I don’t see that much difference between Obama and Bill Clinton. As for health care, there is not that much difference from what Obama achieved and Hillary wanted. His defense policy, particularly the war on terror, is not that tactically different from Bushes, although it has been carried out much more intelligently strategically.

In economic policy there is more room for argument, since the conditions after the crash changed everything so profoundly, only time will tell. Conservatives howl that Obama didn’t fix the economy, and Liberals exult that he saved Capitalism from another Great Depression. They may both be right. There’s no way to tell now without access to alternate timelines.

Conservatives fear, and Liberals hope, Obama will be the new Roosevelt. I suspect he will be remembered by history much like Harry Truman.

Beyond obama care the same goes for domestic. Same old, same old. with the incessant yammering from both sides. A system a old as ours is fairly static. It will take revolution to change in the ways that each side likes to go on and on about. This is not likely since our system is only rather old but not brittle.

Governments liberal or conservative will always find a way to do as they wish and when all else fails there is Martial Law.

I do believe that an enemy soldier or even an un-uniformed guerilla fighting for no flag or civil authority is not due the same legal protection as an American citizen accused of committing a crime in this country. I have no problem with that.

However, in this case, where Tsarnaev is unquestionably a citizen, and the crime is unquestionably committed on American soil, I don’t see any way out of it.

The reading of rights, the Miranda Desision, is not an evil liberal plot to get criminals off the hook. Its been a feature of English Common Law at least since the 30s (the Brits call it “The Caution”), and it has legal precedent that goes far further back than that. I suspect it originated to protect suspects from confessing under torture.

According to Wikipedia, there are comparable civil protections in at least these other countries:

Equivalent rights in other countries
13.1 Australia
13.2 Bangladesh
13.3 Canada
13.4 European Union
13.4.1 England and Wales
13.4.2 France
13.4.3 Germany
13.4.4 Spain
13.5 Hong Kong
13.6 Israel
13.7 New Zealand
13.8 Philippines
13.9 Switzerland
13.10 Thailand
13.11 Ukraine

EDIT: And as TB has brought to our attention below, it isn’t just Conservatives that tend to wink at legal niceties in time of war. Even Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War.

Here.