From the World Socialist Website:

Obama and torture
4 January 2013

As the Obama administration prepares to begin its second term, with its liberal and "left" apologists speculating on prospects for progressive action, events have once again made clear that the Democratic president is continuing and deepening the crimes of his predecessor.

In his first four years in office, Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, worked aggressively to shut down all investigations into CIA torture and other crimes committed in the name of the "war on terrorism." It intervened in case after case to quash lawsuits seeking to hold accountable those who had illegally abducted and tortured thousands of individuals. It sought dismissal of legal actions seeking to uncover information about these crimes by invoking state secrecy.

The result of this sordid policy is that the torturers and those who gave them orders, from the CIA interrogators all the way to the White House, have enjoyed complete immunity....

....Once again, the absence of any significant constituency within America's ruling establishment for constitutional principles and democratic rights is revealed. The US president, Barack Obama, has arrogated to himself the right to subject US citizens to indefinite military detention and order their assassination without charges or trials, on his sole say-so that they are enemies of the state. And neither the judiciary nor any leading figure in either major party, nor the corporate-controlled media, is prepared to challenge this dictatorial policy....

http://wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/04/pers-j04.html