I'm trying to avoid the appearance of gloating over this report:

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama warned Democrats in Congress against making a partisan cause out of the Bush administration's harsh interrogation tactics.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is ignoring him -- loudly -- and the party, from the president on down, may pay the price.

The thing is, it's not as if Barack Obama is innocent of what he warns the Democrats against. It was part of his campaign, for God's sake.

Even now, these people act as if they're still running against "Bush torture." It's as if they think they made Bush "lose" even though he wasn't running, and they're desperate to keep his political corpse alive. Do they think they can maintain the evil Bush in a state of animated political zombiedom forever?

On the other hand, perhaps the Democrats need to be able to claim that Bush is such a truly malignant Svengali that he still rules from beyond the grave. That way, Obama can be better spun as a hapless Bush victim, powerless not to follow the former president's sinister lead. What else could explain (from a Democratic standpoint) this enormous flip-flop?

President Barack Obama was today accused of a major U-turn after he decided to keep the controversial military commissions set up by George Bush to prosecute terror suspects.

The surprise White House announcement reversed Mr Obama's campaign pledge to rely on America's conventional criminal court system.

It was the president's second U-turn this week after he changed his mind and pledged to try and block the court-ordered release of damning photographs showing US soldiers abusing prisoners.

Last night's move led to an outcry from shocked human rights campaigners who thought Mr Obama intended to dismantle the terror tribunals after calling them 'an enormous failure' during last year's presidential campaign.

(After all, he wasn't yet elected to the Senate when she fell prey to the evil Bush, was he?)

Either way, they still need Bush.