On the other hand, Prof. Satterthwaite and her band of angry lefties have not renounced their obsession with prosecuting members of the Bush administration for allegedly authorizing torture, specifically including waterboarding.

During MSNBC’s 11 AM ET hour today, David Shuster interviewed Satterthwaite, the Director of NYU law school’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. There was an air of “let’s give them a fair hearing, then hang them” to her opening statement.

MARGARET SATTERTHWAITE: We really need an independent commission that is non-partisan that will look at all of the evidence that has already come out into the public and also will take account of individual testimony, documentary evidence and the whole truth that they’re able to obtain. To do an analysis of what was approved and by whom, and then to also come to some conclusions about what went wrong and how it was that torture was actually allowed and approved in the United States.

So Satterthwaite wants an “independent” commission—so long as it agrees with the conclusion to which she has come in advance that “torture was actually allowed and approved in the United States.”

DAVID SHUSTER: what are the specific instances of wrongdoing that you point out?

SATTERTHWAITE: Number one, of course, is the approval of torture and the carrying out of torture under American, under the name of American national security. I think the clearest example here would be the approval of the use of waterboarding.

SHUSTER: Based on what we’ve been hearing from the White House so far [Pres. Obama was seen saying he was more interested in looking forward than back], are you disappointed in this?

SATTERTHWAITE: Well, I actually think Pres. Obama has been sending a clear message about truth and justice both being required.  Which is why we have joined with a coalition of groups this morning calling on Obama to create an independent commission. But we also do believe and the law shows that prosecution is necessary where the laws have been broken.

The professor apparently found it in her interest to praise Obama to Shuster.  But in a New York Times article of just two days ago, Satterthwaite was singing a very different tune [emphasis added]:

Mr. Obama’s Justice Department last week told an appeals court that the Bush administration was right to invoke “state secrets” to shut down a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees who say a Boeing subsidiary helped fly them to places where they were tortured.

Margaret Satterthwaite, a faculty director at the human rights center at the New York University law school, said, “It was literally just Bush redux — exactly the same legal arguments that we saw the Bush administration present to the court.”

Mr. Craig said Mr. Holder and others reviewed the case and “came to the conclusion that it was justified and necessary for national security” to maintain their predecessor’s stance.

So when Prof. Satterthwaite finishes assuring the prosecution of the evil Bush administration, will she next go after the Obama folks?

Surprise! The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice has received funding from . . . George Soros.