Hitting The Ground Running

President Obama has made it very clear from his first day in office that things are going to change, and he is wasting no time in making changes. One of his first acts was to halt all new rules issued by Bush and pending implementation. Bush spent his last couple of months in office trying to issue as many rules and screwing up as many things as he could before leaving.

Many of those will now probably never see the light of day. Obama will be reviewing all of them and I seriously doubt many of them will meet with his approval.

Then he moved to eradicate torture and restore justice. He had already said his administration would not allow torture to be used. But immediately after being sworn in, he issued orders to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay within one year. He also asked for a 120 day moratorium on the "kangaroo court" trials being held there. It has been obvious for a while that the Bush tribunals were not only unfair and unjust, but very probably unconstitutional.

Then he froze the pay for most White House staff. I think that was a symbolic gesture to show Americans that we're all in this economic mess together, and he would not be giving raises while American jobs are disappearing.

His next move was more than symbolic. He signed into effect a new set of ethics rules for his government. He banned anyone working for his administration from receiving any kind of gift from a lobbyist or anyone with business before the government. This is a rule that should have always been in effect -- no matter what the administration or Party.

All in all, I think President Obama is off to a good start. It looks like we may actually return to an honest and open government that takes the Constitution seriously.

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In a strange bit of news, the president retook the oath of office on Wednesday. White House counsel Greg Craig said it was done out of "an abundance of caution". Although I doubt it mattered, it was probably a good thing. The same right-wing nutjobs that are still whining about Obama's birth certificate (even though the state of Hawaii has assured everyone it is real and legal) had already began to complain about the bungled oath on Tuesday. It seems kind of funny though, because it's their own hero on the Supreme Court that messed up Tuesday.