You might have heard this week that President Obama is promising to reform the practice of rendition. Rendition is the practice of taking people prisoner, but then shipping them directly off to be held prisoner by foreign countries instead of recognizing their legal rights under the American justice system.

Most American progressives expected Obama to end the practice of rendition, not merely change it. Obama’s reforms don’t change the fundamental problem with rendition: It’s an evasion of constitutional and legal standards for the treatment of prisoners.

Often, rendition has been used as a way to to arrange for prisoners to be tortured and otherwise abused. Obama’s reforms are supposed to prevent that from happening, by gaining the assurances of foreign governments that prisoners won’t be tortured. That’s not much of a reform, however, given that George W. Bush said he was doing the same thing. A few procedures related these assurances are changed around the edges, but the basic problem remains: The American government sends prisoners to countries that are known to torture prisoners, gains the assurance of that prisoners won’t be tortured, and then they’re tortured anyway. It’s a sick wink and nod arrangement in which everyone knows what’s likely to happen.

Furthermore, the ancient right of habeas corpus is profoundly violated by the practice of rendition, even as Obama would do it. Prisoners are supposed to have the ability to demand information about the reason for their imprisonment, and then, in the United States, they’re guaranteed due process of law, including extradition hearings and appeals before they can be sent off to become prisoners of a foreign government.

By altering, rather than ending, the practice of rendition, Barack Obama, like George W. Bush before him, is making an implicit claim that he has the right to act outside the law. We opposed that claim when it was made by President Bush, and we therefore oppose that claim by President Obama as well.

U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich has joined that opposition with a statement issued this week. That statement, in part, reads,

“instead of ending this misguided policy, the Obama Administration proposes reforms to bring oversight to this illegal practice. Specifically, the Special Task Force on Interrogations and Transfer Policies recommends “clarifying and strengthening U.S. procedures for obtaining and evaluating” assurances from receiving countries that detainees will not be tortured. Moreover, the Task Force has recommended greater involvement by the Department of State in securing diplomatic assurances from the receiving country that detainees will not be tortured.

“The people of the United States have clearly voiced and voted for a new direction in U.S. policy. The people of the U.S. did not choose the new administration based on the premise that rendition could be done better. The Obama administration must stop this illegal policy that leads to greater human rights violations.”