CBS) Kroft: Have you been reading anything about the Depression? Anything about FDR?

Mr. Obama: You know, I have actually. There's a new book out about FDR's first 100 days and what you see in FDR that I hope my team can-- emulate, is not always getting it right, but projecting a sense of confidence, and a willingness to try things. And experiment in order to get people working again. . .

On Friday, after he was announced as an agency review team member for Barack Obama,
John O. Brennan submitted his resignation from INSA, an intelligence community and industry think tank; he had been the group's chairman since 2007.

An associate of Brennan's said that he has also stepped down -- perhaps temporarily -- from his position as CEO of the The Analysis Corporation (TAC), a national security and counterterrorism contractor.

Transition rules prohibit agency review team members from drawing salaries on the side or working for non-profits engaged in their subject areas; Brennan's decision to accept an invitation suggests a willingness to work for the Obama administration after the transition ends.

And yes I'm parsing, but that's because everyone who is for torture parses, too.  Most don't say they're for torture, they're for enhanced interrogation techniques.  Heck, Bush has said we don't torture (as others have noted).

I'm not referring to the specifics of each issue, but more about the impression he gave to the nation (average folks). For some people, this was their first chance to see Obama (up close) in an extended interview situation, and for that group, it was a "first impression" moment, not as a candidate, but as the newly-elected president.

Within that context, I thought Obama appeared poised, intelligent, self-composed, and possessed the ability to cause people to have confidence in him.

And, on a lighter note, it was such a relief to see a poised president-elect, who could articulate full sentences with correct grammar and use proper syntax. And, it was especially reassuring to learn that our president-elect actually reads, not MAD magazine, but real books on substantive topics.

People are saying that we'll miss Bush, but I think they're in serious need of therapy or rehabilitation. Personally, I'm thrilled that we'll have a president who can put together a series of words to make an intelligible sentence.

"While we're at it," he said, "we're going to close Guantanamo. And we're going to restore habeas corpus. ... We're going to lead by example _ by not just word but by deed. That's our vision for the future.

A month ago, the NYT's editorial board scoffed at the Bush administration's efforts to keep Gitmo detainees from being released as merely a way to avoid bad press and not to keep dangerous people from killing Americans. Suddenly, the New York Times discovers that the American system does allow for indefinite detention to protect society from dangerous individuals without full-blown criminal trials -- as with the criminally insane.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/opinion/12sun2.html?_r=2&scp=3&sq=indefinite+detention& ;st=nyt&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Now supporters of Obama who have criticized the Bush administration's position on indefinite detention have begun rethinking that policy as well:

As a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama sketched the broad outlines of a plan to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: try detainees in American courts and reject the Bush administration's military commission system.

Now, as Mr. Obama moves closer to assuming responsibility for Guantánamo, his pledge to close the detention center is bringing to the fore thorny questions under consideration by his advisers. They include where Guantánamo's detainees could be held in this country, how many might be sent home and a matter that people with ties to the Obama transition team say is worrying them most: What if some detainees are acquitted or cannot be prosecuted at all?

That concern is at the center of a debate among national security, human rights and legal experts that has intensified since the election. Even some liberals are arguing that to deal realistically with terrorism, the new administration should seek Congressional authority for preventive detention of terrorism suspects deemed too dangerous to release even if they cannot be successfully prosecuted.

"You can't be a purist and say there's never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone," said one civil liberties lawyer, David D. Cole, a Georgetown law professor who has been a critic of the Bush administration.