Ch-ch-changes!

[plutherus]

Thanks to thevirtualjim:

In his 1st 100 hours:
A quick overview of the news:

• Obama ordered a 120-day halt for Gitmo prosecutions and stopped all the war crimes trials until the military tribunal system can be reevaluated.

• He halted all pending federal agency regulations until they can be reviewed by the administration.

• A draft executive order is being circulated that will close Gitmo within a year and halt all war crimes trials in the meantime. It will be signed tomorrow.*

• He has frozen salaries of all White House aides making more than $100,000 a year.

• He met in the Situation Room with Biden and senior officials to talk about Iraq and Afghanistan and with the economic team about the stimulus package.

• He banned gifts from lobbyists to anyone working in the administration. If a former lobbyist is hired, they can't work on the issue they lobbied on or for any agency they lobbied. If aides leave the administration, they cannot lobby their former colleagues for two years.

• He stopped a last-minute Bush directive to remove gray wolves from the endangered species list. Link.

• Before the day is out, he is expected to reverse the Bush Administration policy of prohibiting U.S. money from funding international family planning groups that provide information about abortion.

• He signed an executive order requiring himself and all past presidents to consult the attorney general before they can claim executive privilege. "Information will not be withheld just because I say so," he said. "It will be withheld because a separate authority believes my request is well grounded in the Constitution." That means before Bush can claim executive privilege over the documents dealing with interrogation, he'll have to get approval from the current A.G. Good luck. [Actually, can a former president claim executive privilege? I guess the point's moot now. Yay!]

• In a move that has journalists squeeing, he reversed the Bush Administration's policy on FOIA, which was to deny everything that could be denied and wait as long as possible to do so. He restored the Clinton-era policy, which was to release everything unless foreseeable harm would result. And he did it as an executive order, which has a much stronger weight in law than an attorney general's memo and harder to overturn.

All that, and his secretary of state got confirmed.

Comments

[freydis.livejournal.com]

dude, if this keeps up, next week, we'll all have health care, and the War in Iraq will be over!

Okay, I'll give him a month.


(in all seriousness, I am loving my new President, so far.)