The First Hundred Days of the Obama Administration

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Ok, the other threads are pretty jacked up with side conversations, so I figured I'd start a new one about what President Obama is actually doing.

Yesterday, he froze salaries for top staff members and directed information agencies to err on the side of transparency instead of secrecy. My favorite part was regarding ethics:

Obama's new lobbying rules will ban aides from trying to influence the administration when they leave his staff. Those already hired will be banned from working on matters they have previously lobbied on, or to approach agencies that they once targeted.

The rules also ban lobbyists from giving gifts of any size to any member of his administration. It wasn't immediately clear whether the ban would include the traditional "previous relationships" clause, allowing gifts from friends or associates with which an employee comes in with strong ties.

The new rules also stipulate that anyone who leaves his administration cannot try to influence former friends and colleagues for at least two years. Obama is requiring all staff to attend to an ethics briefing like one he said he attended last week.

Obama called the rules tighter "than under any other administration in history." They followed pledges during his campaign to be strict about the influence of lobbyists in his White House.

"The new rules on lobbying alone, no matter how tough, are not enough to fix a broken system in Washington," he said. "That's why I'm also setting rules that govern not just lobbyists but all those who have been selected to serve in my administration."

Today, Obama ordered the Gitmo and the secret CIA prisons to close. He set up a commission to figure out what to do with the prisoners as well as future prisoners of this kind. He ordered the military to stick to the book and not torture, and he's creating a Mideast envoy position so we can deal with that region better.

So far, so good.