The Republic was an isolationist backwater for most of those 160 years and suspended habeus corpus during the four when we had military secrets worth keeping.

Speaking of strawmen, Meteor Blades and mcjoan over at Kos both took note of the strawman the President set up with the exact same quote.

Meteor Blades:

And then there was Obama's linking of one practically non-existent group to the quite extensive "anything goes" group that comprises elected leaders (and former leaders, including the former Vice President), the right-wing punditry of the megamedia and plenty of prominent bloggers.

Certainly, if one trolls around enough, there can be found a few people who "would almost never put national security over transparency," just as Obama says. But how very few they are. And, with all due respect to the President, how ludicrous to make it seem that these few represent the majority of people who seek justice. That means justice for the remaining prisoners in Guantánamo (and elsewhere) and also for the likes of Dick Cheney who ordered and implemented torture.

It reflects no lack of concern about national security to believe that there should be no special categories of special people who can be judged under different rules than everyone else. The rule of law must be like torture: No excuses. No exceptions.

mcjoan, referring to the same reference to the same nonexistent "who would almost never put national security over transparency" group:

To this, I have an extreme objection. That is a strawman and is nonsense. Accepting and forwarding the Republican frame that those who are arguing for accountability would sacrifice national security is damaging. That's accepting the canard that transparency aids and abets the enemy. On behalf of the ALCU, the CCR, the EFF, every organization that has worked diligently for the past eight years to let Americans know what the Bush administration did in our names, I reject the characterization.

Keeping this nation safe and upholding our Constitution is indeed, as President Obama concluded, our common purpose, and those of us who want to see. Part of that purpose, as Justice Brandeis would argue, is sunlight.

Well, when the president says it that means that it is not a strawman.

As long as you have the right president, I guess.

"...that his administration had not had sufficient time to actually review or rewrite the decision to request a dismissal and just went ahead with filings prepared by the Bush administration."

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THEY NEVER ASKED FOR MORE TIME! This excuse has been blown apart many times over. If they needed more time, all they had to do was ask and it would have been agreed upon. Instead they wanted the entire case thrown out on principle. And the motivations for doing so are obvious.

Obama's smear that "there are those.. who never put national security over transparency" is a calculated, disingenuous generalization "from the center", and its as insulting as it is dangerous. If seeing words for what they are makes one a member of the "loony left" so be it.