The Salahis were not on the guest list and should have been barred from entering last Tuesday's dinner on the White House South Lawn for the prime minister of India, said Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan.

Sullivan said the agency that protects the president is "deeply concerned and embarrassed" that procedures were not followed.

"As our investigation continues, appropriate measures have been taken to ensure this is not repeated," Sullivan said in a written statement.

"The preliminary findings of our internal investigation have determined established protocols were not followed at an initial checkpoint, verifying that two individuals were on the guest list," Sullivan said. "Although these individuals went through magnetometers and other levels of screening, they should have been prohibited from entering the event entirely. That failing is ours."

Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin said officers at the checkpoint had a clipboard with names of the invited guests. Even though the Salahis names weren't on it, they were allowed to proceed. The officers should have called someone on the White House staff or Secret Service personnel before allowing them past the checkpoint, Mackin said.

Earlier, Mackin said the Secret Service may pursue a criminal investigation of the Salahis.

Sullivan said it wasn't good enough that his agency screened more than 1.2 million visitors last year to the White House complex and protected more than 10,000 sites for the president, vice president and others.

"Even with these successes, we need to be right 100 percent of the time," he said.

It is unclear what the couple told officers at the checkpoint that allowed them to go through the security screening. Federal law makes it a crime to knowingly and willfully falsify statements on matters within the federal government's jurisdiction.

"As this moves closer to a criminal investigation there's less that we can say," Mackin said. "We're not leaving any option off the table at this point."

White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said the Secret Service will take appropriate action once the review is completed.

"The men and women of the Secret Service put their lives on the line everyday to protect us. They are heroes and they have the full confidence of the president of the United States," Shapiro said.

The Salahis lawyer, Paul Gardner, posted a comment on their Facebook page saying, "My clients were cleared by the White House, to be there." He said more information would be forthcoming. Several messages left at Gardner's law firm on Friday were not returned.

Bravo Media has confirmed that Michaele Salahi is being considered as a participant in the upcoming "The Real Housewives of D.C." program and on the day of the dinner was being filmed by Half Yard Productions, the producer of the program.

"Half Yard Productions was told by Michaele and Tareq Salahi that they had been invited to the State Dinner. We took them at their word and filmed their preparations for the event. Half Yard Productions had no part in planning their presence at the event," said Abby Greensfelder of Half Yard Productions.

Photos on the couple's Facebook page they previously had gotten close to Obama. One photo, apparently taken in the days before Obama took the oath of office, shows the Salahis in a group shot with Obama and some of the musicians who performed at an inaugural concert.

Other photos show the Salahis in the empty, glass-enclosed box from which the Obamas watched the concert and, according to the caption, "backstage with the Secret Service at the Lincoln Memorial during the Presidential Inauguration."

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Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

Both Kevin Drum and Andrew Sullivan say they think most people are too hard on Obama, but express disappointment at his record on civil liberties issues. I agree that the civil liberties record hasn’t been exactly what I would have wanted, but I'm continually surprised that people are disappointed in this turn. Of all the things for an incumbent President of the United States to take political risks fighting for, obviously reducing the power of the executive branch is going to be dead last on the list. If you want to see civil liberties championed, that’s going to have to come from congress.

It's interesting how what was once lambasted as "Constitution-shredding" under George Bush is now nothing more than:  Obama's "civil liberties record hasn’t been exactly what I would have wanted."  Also, the premise implicitly embedded in Matt's argument is the standard Beltway dogma that there would be serious political costs from reversing the Bush/Cheney abuses of the Constitution and civil liberties.  The success of Obama's campaign -- which emphatically and repeatedly vowed to do exactly that  -- ought to have permanently retired that excuse. 

Even more important, Matt seems to be implying that he knew all along that Obama never really intended to fulfill his multiple campaign promises to restore civil liberties and dismantle the Bush/Cheney war on the Constitution.  So all of those righteous speeches and commitments and campaign positions were nothing more than dishonest instruments for manipulating and placating  the people who supported his campaign?  I don't necessarily disagree with that assessment.  I neither believed nor disbelieved what Obama said during the campaign, but instead intended to wait for the evidence before deciding.  And particularly once I watched Obama -- once his party's nomination was secure -- flagrantly violate his pledge to filibuster any bill containing telecom immunity, I had no expectations that he'd feel at all compelled to adhere to his other promises.

But is it really that surprising that many people did believe that Obama actually meant what he said, given that the entire campaign was predicated on his self-proclaimed uniqueness as a candidate and his over-arching intent to rid our political culture of corroding cynicism and to restore hope and faith in the political process?  If Obama ran a campaign which purposely elevated the hopes of so many people -- particularly younger and new voters -- while secretly harboring the knowledge that he did not feel at all bound by what he was promising, isn't that a fairly serious indictment of his character, as well as a dangerous game to play for the Democratic Party?  And during the time he was vigorously supporting Obama's candidacy last year, did Matt ever point out that Obama didn't really mean what he was saying when he spoke about these matters -- a fairly significant point to make when commenting on the election?  If Obama had no intention of "reducing the power of the executive branch," why did he repeatedly proclaim that he would?

But what strikes me as the most significant aspect of Matt's commentary is that this mitigating analysis was rarely, if ever, applied to Bush.  I've been reading many arguments from Obama supporters over the last couple of weeks insisting that Obama can't possibly give civilian trials to all Terrorism suspects because having to free detainees whom they can't convict in court would be politically catastrophic; but doesn't that same reasoning justify Bush's decision to open Guantanamo and hold terrorist suspects without charges?  After all, how could Bush afford to risk acquittals any more than Obama?  

Similarly, if Matt's argument is true that it's natural and inevitable that Presidents will try to maximize their own power -- and that it's Congress' responsibility to check that --  doesn't that mean that Bush and Cheney got a bad rap all these years for their so-called "Constitution-shredding," and that the ultimate responsibility for their abuses lies not with Bush, Cheney David Addington and John Yoo, but rather with Tom Daschle, Bill Frist, Harry Reid, Denny Hastert and Nancy Pelosi?   If it's the responsibility of Congress to check presidential abuses -- since, as Matt argues, no rational person would ever expect the President to voluntarily impose or even accept limits on his own power -- then the real controversy should be about why Nancy Pelosi and company didn't do more to publicize Bush/Cheney extremism and impose limits on what they were doing.  Matt, however, seemed to argue the opposite in the past -- as he when he insisted that the controversy over what Pelosi knew about torture was irrelevant because she was just a "bit player" in the whole affair.  If complaints about Obama's civil liberties abuses are overheated because it's unreasonable to expect him to do anything different, shouldn't the same be said of Bush and Cheney?

I agree with Matt's explicit point that Congress has an important role to play in checking presidential abuses -- a role they've clearly abdicated no matter which party was in control.  He's also right that Presidents don't easily relinquish power.  But it's hardly unreasonable to object when someone runs for high political office based on clear and repeated promises that they have squarely violated.  Whatever else is true, watching Obama embrace extremist policies can still be "disappointing" even if one isn't surprised that he's doing it.  I could understand and accept a lot more easily this blithe acquiescence to Obama's record if it weren't for the fact that progressives and Democrats spent so many years screaming bloody murder over Bush's use of indefinite detention, military commissions, state secrets, renditions, and extreme secrecy -- policies Obama has largely and/or completely adopted as his own.  One can't help but wonder, at least in some cases, how genuine those objections were, as opposed to their just having been effective tools to discredit a Republican president for partisan and political gain.

Carter said he was resigning due to "personal issues," and -- like Greg Craig before him -- remained loyal to Obama by refraining, at least thus far, from publicly criticizing any administration policies.  I have no idea what actually motivated Carter's abrupt resignation, but here's what I do know:  so many of the detention and other "War on Terror" policies Obama has explicitly adopted were the very same ones which Carter (as well as Obama) repeatedly railed against during the Bush years, in Carter's case primarily in blogs he maintained both at The Washington Post and at Slate.  Whatever else is true, the policies Obama has adopted in the last six months in the very areas of Carter's responsibilities were ones Carter vehemently condemned when implemented by Bush.

Last week, the Obama DOJ announced that it would deny trials to several Guantanamo detainees and instead send them to military commissions.  In May, 2008, Carter condemned military commissions in general as "fundamentally and fatally flawed" and argued that "the rule of law will prevail only if they are perpetually blocked."  He cited a trial in a "civilian court" (his emphasis) of accused terrorists that had just been held by France -- "using a combination of open and sealed (i.e., classified) evidence to prove the defendants' guilt in a six-day trial" -- and argued the U.S. should copy that model:  exactly the "civilian court" model the Obama administration has decisively rejected for many, perhaps most, detainees.  

More notably, in a separate post from April, Carter harshly condemned the Bush administration's decision to use a military commission to try Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, accused of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania.  Carter suggested that trying detainees for "war crimes" for pre-2001 acts violates the Constitution's ban on ex post facto punishments (since the U.S. was not at war at that time), and independently, he objected to "the deliberate decision to take this case away from federal prosecutors," arguing that "our default choice for the prosecution of suspected terrorists should be federal court" because "the substantive and procedural due process granted by federal courts has strategic value -- it confers legitimacy on the outcome."  While the Obama administration commendably sent Ghailani to New York to be tried in a civilian court, it just announced two weeks ago that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, whose case originated as a criminal investigation with the FBI, would now be turned over to a military commission for prosecution in connection with the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole -- raising all of the serious objections Carter voiced to the Ghailani case.

Carter had also voiced serious concerns over the Bush DOJ's use of the "state secrets" privilege as a means of evading vital constitutional and other legal questions -- only to watch the Obama DOJ do the same thing.  He insisted upon a distinction between conventional wars of the past and the "War on Terror" when claiming presidential power -- pointing out that conventional wars have limits and come to an end and the "War on Terror" doesn't -- only to watch the Obama administration discard that distinction and instead adopt exactly the Bush/Cheney "war" theory as a means to detain people with no charges.  During the campaign, he expressed excitement over what appeared to be Obama's stated willingness to prosecute Bush officials for war crimes, only to watch Obama, once elected, quickly insist that we should Look Forward, not Backward.   Relatedly, Carter advocated real consequences for DOJ torture-approving lawyers such as John Yoo (specifically, his firing from Berkeley), only to watch the Obama administration take multiple steps to protects such officials from any legal consequences.  He applauded the Bush Pentagon's cancellation of a key appointment of Gen. Jay Hood to Pakistan on the ground that Hood had presided over Guantanamo and was thus "tainted by torture," only to watch Obama appoint the highly tainted Gen. McChyrstal as his commander in Afghanistan.

As I said, I have no idea whether any of this played a role in Carter's resignation, and it's certainly possible that loyalty to Obama would prevent him from voicing these complaints.  He's a thoughtful analyst who is not easily pigeon-holed and I don't want to attribute ideas to him he hasn't expressed [for instance, Carter supported the work I did on the Pentagon's military analyst program but also defended Obama's vote for telecom immunity, though on the ground that the Government should be held accountable for illegal spying (another position the Obama administration has undermined)].  But what is abundantly clear is that many of the Bush/Cheney policies which Carter found most offensive are ones which the new administration has explicitly adopted as its own.  Equally clear is that, following Greg Craig, this is now the second high-profile resignation of a relatively devoted civil libertarian in a short period of time.  Combine that with the still-missing-and-unconfirmed Dawn Johnsen, and all of this leaves those who are indifferent or hostile to civil liberties values -- people like John Brennan and Rahm Emanuel -- with even fewer counter-weights than before.

UPDATE:  James Joyner adds some thoughts about Carter's resignation, which I generally share (again, excluding speculation over why he resigned), but one his commenters claims I was wrong in what I wrote because Carter approved of both civilian trials and military courts-martial as a means of trying terrorists, and only disapproved of "special military tribunals created after 9/11."  The commenter correctly describes Carter's position, but I don't see how that makes what I wrote wrong.  Aside from the fact that Carter explicitly advocated that we follow France's example of trying terrorist suspects in "civilian courts," and separately wrote that "our default choice for the prosecution of suspected terrorists should be federal court" (links above), the military commissions used by Bush and now Obama are not military courts-martial and don't use the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  Instead, they are the very "special military tribunals created after 9/11" which the commenter indicates (correctly) Carter opposes.

On a different note, Wired's Noah Shachtman spoke to Carter today and came away convinced that his resignation was not due to policy differences with the administration, for what that's worth.  As I made clear from the start, far more interesting than Carter's real reasons for resigning is to examine the huge gap between the views of a very respected military and legal analyst who volunteered to help get Obama elected and the positions Obama has taken since becoming President.

And there's a lot to criticize, particularly on the eve of a planned speech Tuesday in which he's reportedly going to try to sell an Afghanistan escalation -- at least 30,000 more troops -- as an exit strategy. Glenn Greenwald has laid out Obama's civil liberties transgressions, and the way he's reversed campaign promises and backed Bush-Cheney policies on rendition, military commissions and government secrecy. Like Huffington, I'm alarmed that the White House seems to be dismissing the need for a second stimulus to deal with what appears to be a "jobless recovery," while also sending word that reducing the deficit is a pressing priority (which is crazy in an ongoing recession).

But using Katrina as a point of comparison is excessive. Katrina was an example of government incompetence and indifference, all at once. Obama is neither incompetent nor indifferent. He is a centrist Democrat, one who brought in a record amount of Wall Street money during the campaign and, not surprisingly, a whole lot of Wall Street veterans with him into the White House. I find that many progressives who jumped on the Obama bandwagon early, selling him as the progressive candidate in the race contrasted with corporate sellout Hillary Clinton, are, like Huffington, among the most disappointed by the president. I was an Obama admirer but a skeptic, and I find I'm less chagrined about the ways he falls short of my ideals than the folks who swooned for him early.

The two most interesting pieces I've read on Obama's troubles this week avoid rhetorical excess and raise more questions than answers, but I recommend them anyway. On Salon, Michael Lind asked "Can Populism Be Liberal?" and answered, maybe: But not as long as the Democrats are the party of Goldman Sachs. Like Huffington, he argues that Obama needs to focus on jobs to keep populist anger from being channeled by the opportunistic, solutions-free GOP. If you missed it, read it over this long weekend.

In his New Yorker blog, George Packer examined Obama's declining popularity and rising troubles at home and abroad, and, like me, argues that part of Obama's problem is the unrealistic expectations of many enthusiasts.  Packer adds this troubling observation:

The Obama movement was unlike other social movements because it began and ended with a person, not an issue. And it was unlike ordinary political coalitions because it didn’t have the organizational muscle of voting blocs. The difficulty in sustaining its intensity through the inevitable ups and downs of governing shows the vulnerability in this model of twenty-first-century, Internet-based politics.

Certainly Arianna Huffington didn't share an agenda with neoconservative Ken Adelman -- but both endorsed Obama. Looking back on the unlikely coalition Obama assembled, at least partly because of the nation's economic collapse and the incompetence and corruption of the Bush administration, it shouldn't be surprising that he began to lose support once he had to actually govern.

I'm a little more patient with Obama because I never saw him as the great left hope, but I agree with liberal critics who want the president to deliver on Democratic ideals and focus on the many casualties of the economy. It's funny but with a Democrat in the White House, Matt Drudge is trumpeting what liberals have always talked about as the "real" unemployment rate -- the unemployed plus the underemployed and those who've given up finding work -- and it's over 17 percent. A third of all African-American men are jobless. Let's welcome the right's sudden focus on the casualties of the economy, and challenge them to come up with solutions. They won't, but Obama can and should.

On this Thanksgiving, I remain grateful Obama is in the White House. I'm thankful Dick Cheney is flapping his gums as a private citizen, not the most powerful man in the world. I believe in Obama's intelligence and decency. Like a lot of liberals, I believe he shares "our" values; I've just never been entirely sure he has either the political courage or savvy it takes to act on them, quite yet.

The real challenge is to show Obama and other shaky Democrats that there are political rewards for representing the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Too many politically conflicting interests got to say they elected Obama, and too many progressives jumped too soon to claim him as our own, without asking him to prove it. There's a lot of work left to do to save this country. Have a great holiday, and then let's get back to doing the work. 

UPDATE: Yes, I've corrected this piece to note that Beck wants to march on Washington 47 years to the day after King's march. It said 37 years before. Because if it was 47 years, that would make me 51, and I can't really be that old, can I? Also wanted to add another must read: John B. Judis's "Case for Deficit Spending" in The New Republic. Add Judis to the list of people befuddled by the Obama administration's insistence it will soon push deficit reduction.