Barack Obama has shown a reluctance to address the issue of possible crimes committed by President Bush and his administration. In this context, the office of John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has issued a 487-page report (PDF) comprehensively examining and condemning the Bush administration’s abuses of power during the past eight years. The report, titled “Reining in the Imperial Presidency,” bluntly addresses the unconstitutional expansion of executive power: “The Bush Administration’s approach to power is, at its core, little more than a restatement of Mr. Nixon’s famous rationalization of presidential misdeeds: ‘When the president does it ,that means it’s not illegal.’…Perhaps nowhere was the range and scope of this most recent version of the Imperial Presidency more apparent than within the United States Department of Justice, the cornerstone of law enforcement in our country…There have been additional transgressions against the Constitution and the country by the Bush Administration. There was the contrived and manipulated drive to a preemptive war of aggression with Iraq…There was the unconscionable use of detention without cause; enhanced interrogation if not outright torture; extraordinary rendition; the extralegal use of national security letters; warrantless wiretaps of American citizens; the unilateral weakening of our regulatory system; the use of signing statements to override the laws of the land; and the intimidation and silencing of critics and whistleblowers who dared tell fellow citizens what was being done in their name.”