Obama's First Week: Taking on Torture, Guantanamo, Wall Street, Lobbyists, Ethics, Transparency, & More

This has been an amazing and hopeful week. I feel like I'm waking up from a nightmare, like I'm able to breathe again and have a genuine depth of hope for our nation and beyond. I actually feel more proud to be an American than I ever have before. In his first week in office, President Barack Obama took immediate actions to begin to unravel the profound harm done to our nation, our standing in the world, and the planet. His message is strong and clear that America is being restored to a nation of laws, integrity, justice, and will increasingly be living up to our values and ideals. Here is a glimpse of this first week:

On Guantanamo and Torture

Obama orders Guantanamo Bay closed, bans torture:

With a few strokes of a pen, President Obama this morning reversed linchpins of the Bush administration's war on terror.
He signed executive orders to shut down the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center within a year and to ban harsh interrogations -- what critics say are tantamount to torture .
Obama signed the orders after meeting with 16 retired military officers, who he said pleaded with him to stand up for human rights and American values in combating terrorism.
"They made an extraordinary impression on me," said Obama, as they stood behind him and applauded.
After signing the orders, Obama said, "the message we are sending around the world is that the United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism, and we are going to do so vigilantly; we are going to do so effectively; and we are going to do so in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals."

On transparency, ethics, limits on lobbyists

On First Day, Obama Quickly Sets a New Tone: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all - President Obama moved swiftly on Wednesday to impose new rules on government transparency and ethics, using his first full day in office to freeze the salaries of his senior aides, mandate new limits on lobbyists and demand that the government disclose more information.... “Transparency and rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

On the Economy and Wall Street

Obama is going to put the CLAMP DOWN on Wall Street: A theme of that report, that many major companies and financial instruments now mostly unsupervised must be swept back under a larger regulatory umbrella, has been embraced as a guiding principle by the administration, officials said.

Plans Fast Action to Tighten Financial Rules - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/us/politics/25regulate.html?_r=2&hpObama: The Obama administration plans to move quickly to tighten the nation’s financial regulatory system.

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THE AGENDA

Civil Rights
Defense
Disabilities
Economy
Education
Energy & Environment
Ethics
Family
Fiscal
Foreign Policy
Health Care
Homeland Security
Immigration
Iraq
Poverty
Rural
Seniors & Social Security
Service
Taxes
Technology
Urban Policy
Veterans
Women
Additional Issues

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Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction. ~ Barack Obama