Those who like and believe-in Barack Obama hypothesize endlessly about his unfolding record of continuing and even extending a large fraction of Bush’s right-wing policies:
— pressure from entrenched interests
— lack of support from Congress
— the safety of the American people is his #1 priority
— economic constraints
— and so on.
At one time I was among those who attributed that behavior to spineless in the face of pressure. No longer. I’ve no come to realize that he is yet another center-right jerk, but one who can do an amazing impersonation of an empathetic progressive. Here’s but one piece of evidence.

Per Glenzilla:

On Thursday, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision (.pdf), ruled that convicted criminals have no constitutional right to access the state’s evidence in order to subject it to DNA tests which could prove their innocence. Two lower courts, a district court and the Ninth Circuit, had ruled there was such a right. In reversing those rulings, the Court’s majority was composed of its conservative Justices (Roberts (who wrote the opinion), Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy).

[...]

The Obama DOJ aggressively argued before the Court that convicted criminals have no constitutional right to access evidence for DNA analysis. Indeed, its decision to embrace this extreme Bush position caused much controversy and anger back in February.

Indeed, the Obama DOJ rejected explicit requests from defendants rights advocates to repudiate the Bush position. Instead, the Obama DOJ announced that Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal would make his debut appearance before the Supreme Court in that capacity advocating the Bush position (and that’s what then happened):

The solicitor general’s office has turned down a request by the Innocence Project to disavow a Bush Administration stance on prisoners’ access to DNA evidence in post-conviction proceedings. As a result, on March 2, Neal Katyal will make his debut as deputy solicitor general by arguing before the Supreme Court in support of the state of Alaska’s view that prisoners have no constitutional right to obtain DNA evidence that might help them prove their innocence — even if the prisoners pay for the DNA testing themselves. . . .

The point is that there is no wealthy and/or entrenched interest pushing to deny prisoners the possible opportunity to prove their innocense. In fact, Obama himself once sponsored legislation giving that right in the Illinois legislature. But now the first case that Obama’s Solicitor General’s Office argued before the Supreme Court managed to shoot that right down. I claim that effort illustrates who Obama now is.