Mr. Obama made his name in the Illinois Legislature by championing historic civil liberties reforms, like the mandatory recording of all interrogations and confessions in capital cases. Although prosecutors, the police, the Democratic governor and even some death penalty advocates were initially opposed to the bill, Mr. Obama won them over.

 He seems to give all the credit to Obama and his great persuasive skills, but that's not the real story. Anyone who followed the news in Illinois during that time is aware that the real impetus behind the law was a series of scandals involving false confessions that were repeatedly highlighted in the local papers.

In Chicago, a series of high profile false confession cases, including the Ryan Harris case, and the Lori Roscetti case, spurred calls for a statewide bill to mandate taping of interrogations.697 These calls grew to a fever pitch after the Chicago Tribune published a series on false confessions in December 2001.698 In response to the Ryan Harris case, Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine instituted a program in which his prosecutors obtained suspects' confessions on videotape.699 The flaws of taping only the final confession became evident, however, in December, 2001, when the first videotaped false confession surfaced in the murder case of Corethian Bell.700 After some fifty hours of interrogation, Chicago police officers got Bell to confess on videotape to the murder and sexual assault of his own mother.701 When DNA test results exonerated Bell and implicated another man who had a history of sexually assaulting women in Bell's neighborhood, Cook County prosecutors were forced to drop charges against Bell and agree to his release.702 The Bell case, the Roscetti case, the Ryan Harris case and several others finally led Cook County State's Attorney Devine to endorse a bill which would require all Illinois police officers to tape custodial interrogations of suspects in homicide cases.703 With the support of the Cook County State's Attorney, the bill passed the Illinois Senate by a vote of 58 to 0, and the Illinois House by a vote of 109 to 7.704 With such overwhelming legislative support, Governor Blagojevich, a former prosecutor, was hard pressed to veto the bill, even though he had opposed videotaping interrogations during his run for governor. Blagojevich had supported the taping only of confessions, fearing that a policy of taping interrogations would make it more difficult for police officers to obtain confessions from suspects.705 He acknowledged his change of heart when he signed the bill into law, citing the fact that he became persuaded that taping would "help us make sure that the evidence we have is more reliable and more accurate and give us a better chance of doing justice."

Of course, Rosen calls that view "kneejerk" and says Obama does not share that view.

The language of this article gives me more pause than the content.  This is just more reframing of word meanings.  It's what's been done with "liberal" and "feminist" and any number of words that started out meaning positive things but have been twisted into negatives.  It's like saying, "I'm not a feminist, but I believe in reproductive rights and equality."  Okay...well...what is a feminist if not a person who believes in those two things?

I, too, worry that in Obama's zeal to please, he'll not take stands on important issues.  Every time someone says they won't vote for Obama in the ge, choice and other democratic issues get thrown down their throats.  Am I the only one here who thinks a president Obama might toss in a conservative (even moderately conservative) judge or two in order to keep the republicans happy?

Because let's be honest: that's what he means about "bringing folks together."  He wants both sides to be happy, and the only way to accomplish that is through compromise.  I could very easily imagine Obama putting an incredibly liberal judge in California or MA because that'll keep them happy, then turning around and putting an incredibly conservative judge in TX because that'll make THEM happy.  Who knows what he'd do with the supreme court.  He doesn't mind putting republicans on his cabinet.  Why not put someone on the Court who, say, doesn't support choice but supports civl rights?  Or is "for" flag burning (inasmuch as anyone can be) and for voter ID laws?

After three decades in Washington, Pete Rouse is a voice of experience for Sen. Barack Obama.

By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post

Sen. Barack Obama had hired Pete Rouse for just such a moment.

It was the fall of 2005, and the celebrated young senator -- still new to Capitol Hill but aware of his prospects for higher office -- was thinking about voting to confirm John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice. Talking with his aides, the Illinois Democrat expressed admiration for Roberts's intellect. Besides, Obama said, if he were president he wouldn't want his judicial nominees opposed simply on ideological grounds.

And then Rouse, his chief of staff, spoke up. This was no Harvard moot-court exercise, he said. If Obama voted for Roberts, Rouse told him, people would remind him of that every time the Supreme Court issued another conservative ruling, something that could cripple a future presidential run. Obama took it in. And when the roll was called, he voted no....

From the same article -- kind of goes against the "new, change" guy rhetoric...

..."Pete's very good at looking around the corners of decisions and playing out the implications of them," Obama said an interview when asked about that discussion. "He's been around long enough that he can recognize problems and pitfalls a lot quicker than others can."

Pete Rouse is the Outsider's Insider, a fixer steeped in the ways of a Washington that Obama has been both eager to learn and quick to publicly condemn. The meticulous workaholic rose through three decades of unglamorous legislating to become arguably the most influential Democratic aide in the Senate when he worked for then-Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.)....