It's happening so fast it makes your head swim and your heart leap. He's not wasting any time rolling back the damage of the last eight years.
American presidents and their staff work for the American people, they are not monarchs with an inner court of priviliged nobles. President Obama has reminded all his predecessors of that simple fact, living up to a campaign promise to "nullify attempts to make the timely release of presidential records more difficult."
President Barack Obama, in his first full day in office, revoked a controversial executive order signed by President Bush in 2001 that limited release of former presidents’ records.
The new order could expand public access to records of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in the years to come as well as other past leaders, said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. …
Under Bush’s order, former presidents had broad ability to claim executive privilege and could designate others including family members who survive them to exercise executive privilege on their behalf.
Obama’s new order gives ex-presidents less leeway to withhold records, Aftergood said, and takes away the ability of presidents’ survivors to designate that privilege.
Separately, an Obama memorandum issued Wednesday also appears to effectively rescind a 2001 memo by President Bush’s then-Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft giving agencies broad legal cover to reject public disclosure requests.
Over at MoJo blog, they quote CREW chief counsel Anne Weismann as explaining:
"[Obama]'s putting former presidents on notice that if you want to continue a claim of executive privilege that [Obama] doesn't think is well-placed, you're going to have to go to court."
Even Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is impressed, writing "On Inauguration Day, I promised to offer praise for Barack Obama when he pursued good policy, and it didn’t take long." At least one other conservative thinks this executive order is "nothing more than him throwing a meaty bone to his constituency who hopes to be able to find out “The Truth” about the Bush administration’s alleged plans to turn this nation into a dictatorial theocracy." That's simply mean-spirited hyperbole, hiding an implied argument. Who would really want to argue, out there in plain words, that stopping Bush's bosses (the American people) from finding out what's in millions of his administration's emails is a good thing?
Crossposted from Newshoggers
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
It's Not a Dream!
Want to feel your heart leap? Want to feel a little flutter in your tummy and a tingle all over? Want to get choked up just a little bit.
CLICK HERE!
CLICK HERE!
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Prayer You Didn't Hear
The opening prayer at the Lincoln Memorial event yesterday by openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson was not seen or heard on television. It was given a couple of minutes prior to the opening of the event. It contains many good thoughts and deserves to be heard by as many as possible. It's unfortunate that this was not broadcast since we will all hear Rick Warren deliver his prayer tomorrow.
Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God's blessing upon our nation and our next president.
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will...
Bless us with tears - for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger - at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort - at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience - and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility - open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance - replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity - remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O
good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand - that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he
might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.
AMEN.
Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God's blessing upon our nation and our next president.
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will...
Bless us with tears - for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger - at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort - at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience - and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility - open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance - replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity - remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O
good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand - that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he
might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.
AMEN.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The Audacity of Hopelessness
This article by Erica Heller, from the Huffington Post is worth reading and forwarding. It is well-written, brief, and full of truth. It's the kind of article you read and think, "I wish I had said that."
It's getting harder these days to be cranky, to stay curmudgeonly.
It can still be done, of course, it's just that right now, it requires much more of an effort than usual. And curmudgeons resent that, in fact, that's an integral part of being a curmudgeon.
But really, who could possibly have taken a single glance at the Obama family earlier this week, touring the Lincoln Memorial, cool and crisp in their in their perfect January toggery, and remained stoic? (Not to mention the fact that only a monster with a heart of steel or stone could not have missed the fact that Michelle looks better than anyone has a right to in a white, quilted down jacket, when even the most lithe and anorectic supermodels look like fullbacks in the same winter wear.)
With the inauguration only a scant 3 days and 6 minutes away, hope is in sight. Relief, regardless of how long it takes and how it arrives, is on the way. It's hard not to beam like human klieg lights, to be so proud of the way we have comported ourselves, sending a fickle fellow back to the Senate and an incompetent couture-grabber back to Alaska, while sending the best of the best on to Washington to do a job that makes the patience of Job (and the feats of Jobs) look like kindergarten.
Still, if I want to experience even a brief frisson of the old rage and familiar, mind-numbing, incomparable despair, I have only to watch Bush's last babbling, Cheney's last televised snooze, and realize and remember how much death and destruction they have caused, the colorful riot of catastrophe they have painted again and again around our country and the world. And the fact that odds are, they and their cronies are not headed for war crimes trials in The Hague but rather to cushy retirements, the lecture circuit, lucrative book deals; memoirs conceived through the clouded, tinted lenses of smarmy narcissism, revisionist history and the most stupendously alarming, stubborn kind of reality-defying psychosis.
Snarky cynic, curmudgeon or not, I find that unbridled glee can indeed coexist with a sickening wave of rage. It's a delicate balance indeed but no, the past eight years can be neither forgotten nor forgiven.
Even if it's unseemly, some things may just be worth staying angry about, even as we pat ourselves on the back, smile broadly at tomorrow and exuberantly turn the page.
It's getting harder these days to be cranky, to stay curmudgeonly.
It can still be done, of course, it's just that right now, it requires much more of an effort than usual. And curmudgeons resent that, in fact, that's an integral part of being a curmudgeon.
But really, who could possibly have taken a single glance at the Obama family earlier this week, touring the Lincoln Memorial, cool and crisp in their in their perfect January toggery, and remained stoic? (Not to mention the fact that only a monster with a heart of steel or stone could not have missed the fact that Michelle looks better than anyone has a right to in a white, quilted down jacket, when even the most lithe and anorectic supermodels look like fullbacks in the same winter wear.)
With the inauguration only a scant 3 days and 6 minutes away, hope is in sight. Relief, regardless of how long it takes and how it arrives, is on the way. It's hard not to beam like human klieg lights, to be so proud of the way we have comported ourselves, sending a fickle fellow back to the Senate and an incompetent couture-grabber back to Alaska, while sending the best of the best on to Washington to do a job that makes the patience of Job (and the feats of Jobs) look like kindergarten.
Still, if I want to experience even a brief frisson of the old rage and familiar, mind-numbing, incomparable despair, I have only to watch Bush's last babbling, Cheney's last televised snooze, and realize and remember how much death and destruction they have caused, the colorful riot of catastrophe they have painted again and again around our country and the world. And the fact that odds are, they and their cronies are not headed for war crimes trials in The Hague but rather to cushy retirements, the lecture circuit, lucrative book deals; memoirs conceived through the clouded, tinted lenses of smarmy narcissism, revisionist history and the most stupendously alarming, stubborn kind of reality-defying psychosis.
Snarky cynic, curmudgeon or not, I find that unbridled glee can indeed coexist with a sickening wave of rage. It's a delicate balance indeed but no, the past eight years can be neither forgotten nor forgiven.
Even if it's unseemly, some things may just be worth staying angry about, even as we pat ourselves on the back, smile broadly at tomorrow and exuberantly turn the page.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
A Classy Cultured President
John Stewart doesn't know what to make of a president who treats others with respect and dignity.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Ann Coulter and Al Franken - Odd Couple
Ann Coulter would be one of those people who might fit the description of an attractive nuisance if she weren't so damn unattractive in every imaginable way. She is without a doubt the most vapid, mean-spirited, small-minded, ridiculous right-winger out there. She even surpasses Rush Limbaugh in her stupidity and meanness, but that's her shtick. That's how she makes money, and it's a sad commentary that she is able to sell books and get air time to discuss her wacky views.
So, it's always pleasing to see someone take her down a notch or two, which isn't hard to do, but in this short clip, Al Franken does it in elegant fashion. In one brief sentence, he exposes the superficiality of Ann Coulter.
So, it's always pleasing to see someone take her down a notch or two, which isn't hard to do, but in this short clip, Al Franken does it in elegant fashion. In one brief sentence, he exposes the superficiality of Ann Coulter.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
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