And Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton support him well in that area.

But with regard to human rights -- it is easy enough to cast the stone out of the eye of the "evil-doers" of other countries, but Obama needs to work a lot harder right here on human rights issues. His stance on the discriminatory sentencing for different types of cocaine is one step in the right direction. But his administration, especially his Justice Department have made numerous steps in the wrong direction for every step that they have made in the right direction on human rights.

Guantanamo is a disgrace. It makes our whole country look hypocritical on the human rights issue. Obama should have closed it down as soon as he took office without giving Congress a chance to stop him. He should have had a plan in place before his inauguration and announced it at the inauguration.

I realize that Guantanamo is a Republican Bush 2 crime, but still Obama has not made a great enough effort to close it.

And Guantanamo is not the only human rights disaster on Obama's watch. There is too much surveillance. How can we claim to be "free" or a true democracy or republic when the government can trace our every phone call, our every location over the course of the day or rummage through our personal luggage when we travel?

Some surveillance is necessary, but we have far too much.

Then all the absurd secrecy. Would it really be an exaggeration to suggest that if we ended the excessive secrecy, our government might save a whole lot of money and function more efficiently?

Oh, and the growing trend of military involvement in law enforcement within the 50 states. Horrors.

I never thought the Third Amendment might ever come under attack. But at the rate the Obama administration and Republican House are going, we could have Navy Seals overnighting in our front rooms before you know. All we would need is a national economic emergency requiring us all to tighten our belts and make room for soldiers in our home -- to save taxpayer money, of course. (I'm joking about the Third Amendment, but then, when I was growing up, I never could have imagined that my own government would be checking me for weapons when I traveled. My high school government teacher must be turning over in her grave! So soldiers in our homes is not an impossibility as things are going. The Fourth Amendment has already been trashed as have the First and the Fifth. The Founding Fathers did not place the Third Amendment so high on the list without a reason. Let's hope their decision was not based on prescient knowledge.)

OK, so maybe the Third Amendment thing is a big paranoid, but now that the military is permitted to be involved in ordinary law enforcement (am I wrong or are they now to be involved in drug busts?), where are the soldiers going to stay? Do we have enough space on our military bases to house them when they are working within our borders?