This is Change...

... I Can Believe In.

Issued by President Barack Obama on 22 January 2009 at the White House.

EXECUTIVE ORDER -- ENSURING LAWFUL INTERROGATIONS

Effective immediately, an individual in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government, or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States, in any armed conflict, shall not be subjected to any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in Army Field Manual 2 22.3 (Manual).

From this day forward, unless the Attorney General with appropriate consultation provides further guidance, officers, employees, and other agents of the United States Government may, in conducting interrogations, act in reliance upon Army Field Manual 2 22.3, but may not, in conducting interrogations, rely upon any interpretation of the law governing interrogation -- including interpretations of Federal criminal laws, the Convention Against Torture, Common Article 3, Army Field Manual 2 22.3, and its predecessor document, Army Field Manual 34 52 issued by the Department of Justice between September 11, 2001, and January 20, 2009.

The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.

So It Begins...

Today, Barack H. Obama became the 44th President of the United States.

More than a million people made an appearance in person to wish him, and our nation, well.

Some might be disappointed that they did not hear the soaring rhetorical speech. But if you heard the President's well crafted call-to-arms, you heard a man ready to lead, ready to work, and ready to make government work for the People again.

The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

I am ready to do my part. Again with pride. Are you? It will take all of use to make those so rooted in Washington to understand that a new day dawned today, the 20th of January, 2009.

(Getty photo via BBC News.)

This Land Was Made...

... For You and Me

Today is it. The last full day.

Eight long years of incompetence, arrogance, greedy and dangerous leadership is finally ending.

Unlike some Americans out there who will shed a tear when that final helo flight takes Bush and his family for that last flight to Texas, I am certain that many, many more tears will be shed by those celebrating the fact that the flight is even taking place.

These guys say it best. And they said it yesterday in celebratory joy:



Like so many others, I hope, I wish, that tomorrow begins anew what is best about our nation. A collective striving towards our better angels. A belief that we can and will improve ourselves, our children and our neighbors. A common dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And a return to a foreign policy that our last crisis President called for in his first inaugural address:

"the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors."

Most of all, I want my government to invert what Scott Horton describes as his epitaph for the Bush Years - Augustine's question - "Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia? (If it does not do justice, what is the government but a great criminal enterprise?)" I want our government to return to what government's do - deliver justice.

Then we can truly sing again, "this land was made for you and me."

Change We Can Believe In?

From the annals of YKTBFKM comes this little tidbit in this mornings "Reliable Source"

Barack Obama last night, ducking into his first dinner party since moving back to Washington, at the Chevy Chase home of...conservative columnist George Will! Who, it should be noted, was no fierce supporter of the GOP ticket this time. Other right-leaning dinner partners spotted at the gathering, according to pool reports: Bill Kristol, David Brooks.

The reliable gossips added more tidbits later in the day:

Ten guests (all conservative men, according to press reports) including Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot, Larry Kudlow of CNBC, Rich Lowry of the National Review, Michael Barone of FOX, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol and David Brooks.

Why? The theory floated today: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

My first thought was what did the moustache Freidman do to get left out of this august dinner group?

My next thought was this wish. I hope that he threatened each of these boneheads with an all expense paid trip to the CIA black prison of their choice (complete with some specialized physical therapy) unless they weakened the moonbat smack rhetoric they feed their addled right-wing addicts. Who says those nifty unitary executive powers couldn't be used??

Then I wondered if the President had to take an extra-long shower when he returned to the hotel after whoring around with these media tramps?

Thanks to the wonderfulness of Al Gore's internet, I am able to make sense of this only through the sly writings and exceptional illustrations provided by the amazing Driftglass - Everyone Comes to Barack's (Cafe Americaine). (BTW, congrats Drifty on winning the 2008 Weblog Awards for Best Individual Blogger!!!)

Finally, my last gripe is simply this. With the wide plethora of exceptional opinion writers on the Internet, why, oh why, did President Obama not break bread (or perhaps another Ben's Chili Bowl half-smoke) with Glenn Greenwald, Digby & D-Day, any of the First Drafters, Scott Horton or the esteemed COL Pat Lang? All of these folks have been more accurate, more perceptive and repeatedly more connected to America than any so-called journalist/pundit at last night's dinner.

And if BHO did not lay down the law (and the rumors of a meet-up with Rushbo may so indicate).

Like the title says. Last night was not Change We Can Believe In.

Will He or Won't He??

It seems to be the big question of the past few weeks, doesn't it? Will our new President fundamentally change the drift of our current domestic and foreign policies? Or will he make only minor course corrections that keep the ship of state on track to a greater doom?

Well, it is certainly hard to tell when one can only engage in Kremlinology of personnel appointments, read the tea leaves left behind by "unnamed sources close to the transition," listen to the unceasing drone of worthless pundits or parse the few words and speeches given since the election.

One thing is clear, all of us are intent to project upon the new President our own desires for our shared future. I'll admit that I too am happily projecting my hopes that starting January 21st, our new leadership will back away from the expanded executive powers they will inherit, renounce the numerous legal and ethical malpractices issued by the Office of Legal Counsel, and re-establish some national moral authority in the arena of rule of law, economic fairness and human rights.

And like many others, I too hope that I will not be disappointed. Especially after soldiering on these past several years in the labor of a government whose policies are increasingly unsupportable and whose obvious hypocrisy is (or should be) a massive embarrassment.

So, will he or won't he??

Will he renounce the use of "enhanced interrogations"? Or won't he??

Will he uphold his campaign commitments to draw down the Iraqi conflict and close Guantanamo? Or won't he??

Will he direct his new Justice Department to investigate the past Administration's abuses of power? Or won't he??

Will he once again use the government to regulate the unrestrained forces of Wall Street? Or won't he??

Will it be a "new birth of freedom"? Or a continuation of our ruin??

Time will tell. And that time is nigh. It starts in one week. And President Barack Obama has his work cut out for him.

(Photo of Lincoln's Second Innaugeration, March 1865. From the National Archives)

"Where were we???"

The unbelievably great Driftglass serves up another seminal post.

...and the Moderate, worse than any of them "because he knew what they were and went along with them"

Using a simple clip from that great film, Judgement at Nuremberg, the indictment rings as true today as it did then:

"What was going to be a passing phase became a way of life."

Responsibility without authority is the road to inaction. Likewise, authority without accountability is the road to disaster. Finally, apology without accountability is the rankest of hypocrisy -- and the end of the way of life we say we hold dear.

Without some accounting for the last few years, we have indeed traded a "passing phase" for a new "way of life."

As they say, go read it all...