So here we were, preparing to write yet another screed scorching Barack Obama for his nonchalance in the aftermath of the botched airline bombing on Christmas. Surely the president should have cut short his vacation in Hawaii and returned to Washington, we probably would have said. Then, we retrieved an item from Politico.com, in which Josh Gerstein explained:

Partisan attack dogs are trying to make a big deal out of the fact that the Obama Justice Department employs nine lawyers who have worked on the legal defenses of accused terrorists. This is beyond silly. Plato showed why more than 2,000 years ago: Who knows better how to kill a man, he asked, than a physician? Prosecuting attorneys often become defense attorneys when they enter private practice because they know how prosecutors think. When a college football coach moves to a new school, he doesn’t remain loyal to the old one, or try to make his new team lose. Good chess players anticipate their opponents’ moves and can play the black or white pieces with equal skill. Lawyers who have defended terrorist suspects will also be experts at convicting them.

Will someone please remind Barack Obama that he is not the first president to inherit a mess? Lyndon Johnson, for instance, bequeathed to Richard Nixon a war in Vietnam complicated by confused motives and inept tactics. Jimmy Carter turned over to Ronald Reagan an economy battered by stagflation and a foreign policy in ruins. And, yes, George Bush transferred to Obama a quagmire in Afghanistan.

Extraordinary rendition. Guantanamo. Warrantless wiretapping. State-secrets privilege. Military commissions. Indefinite detention without trial. For a president who promised heaping helpings of change, Barack Obama seems remarkably devoted to carrying forward the policies of his predecessor. Comes now word that the administration has signified in favor of extending three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act: the power to access business records, to track “lone wolf” terrorists, and to conduct roving wiretaps. (The first of those provisions is the one that authorizes Uncle Sam to find out what books you’ve been checking out of the local library.)

It has been some time since Americans took note of color-coded threat levels or loaded up on plastic sheeting and duct tape in the event of a biochemical attack. But the recent arrest of Najibullah Zazi, a would-be terrorist who planned to carry out bombings on New York on the anniversary of 9/11; the capture of a man who parked what he thought was a truck bomb near a Dallas skyscraper; the arrest of a man who tried the same thing near a federal courthouse in Illinois; and details about the arrest of several men planning to attack Quantico Marine Corps base, offer a sobering reminder that the terrorist threat has not disappeared.

In his acclaimed speech in Cairo, President Barack Obama said the U.S. is not at war with Islam. In a less prominent speech the other day, John Brennan, the head of the White House homeland security office, said the U.S. is not at war with terrorism, either. Nor, Brennan said, is America at war with “jihadists”—because jihad is a legitimate “holy struggle for a moral goal.“ For that matter, the United States is not engaged in a “global” war; America, Brennan asserted, is at war with al-Qaida—period.

What’s in a name? The Obama administration recently changed the “Global War on Terror” to “Overseas Contingency Operation,“ thereby inviting consternation not only among conservatives but among those preferring clarity of language and purpose. How does a nation order heroes into combat on behalf of a contingency operation? Cry havoc!

It will take several grueling months for the Obama administration to devise a new legal framework for counterterrorism. But there is one relatively minor measure the president can, should, and finally appears willing to adopt right now: an executive order granting temporary asylum to individuals who are wrongly detained but cannot be repatriated or resettled in other countries.

Islamic extremists insist American culture is degraded and perverse. American armed forces in Iraq are proving it—by blasting hard rock music at detainees to weaken their resistance. After being forced to listen to AC/DC, Eminem, Dr. Dre, and other similar fare for days on end, prisoners beat their heads on walls and screamed for relief. Musicians (we use the term loosely) object. Performers for groups with names such as , Rage Against the Machine and Nine Inch Nails don’t like their works being used as weapons. Have they listened to themselves? What does it say about a band when listening to it could be considered torture?