This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, October 3rd, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The President campaigned on a platform of ending the civil liberties abuses of his predecessor.

But things have changed.

President Obama, far from ending or even curtailing many Bush administration abuses, has instead

expanded them.

Tim Lynch, director of the Cato Institute's project on criminal justice comments.

This is Barack Obama from September 2008, I believe.

Is that a campaign event, he said there should be no contradiction between keeping our country safe and secure and respecting our Constitution.

He also said, of the Constitution, don't suggest that it's un-American to abide by what the founding fathers set up.

It's worked pretty well for over 200 years.

That was candidate Obama just before he was elected president and well how's he fared when it comes to civil liberties?

He's fared very poorly.

This is one of the things that those of us who follow these issues have noticed that he's gotten progressively worse as he's been in office

He positioned himself during that campaign to take advantage of a lot of the dissatisfaction

with President Bush and his policies. A lot of those controversial policies

involving especially the war on terrorism, but not limited to that and Obama positioned himself to say if you're

unhappy with these policies I'm your guy put me in office and I will correct these types of abuses and pay more respect to the Constitution

and unfortunately he's in many respects continued the policies of the Bush administration

and in some areas made things worse.

In one area specifically he pledged unequivocally no more national security letters.

Yes he said no more national security letters. He pledged to close the prison based on in

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