Here are the incredibly important things I think the new President did right today (see this New York Times article for complete story):
1. He suspended the GITMO military tribunals for 120 days, with an obvious eye toward ending them.
2. He reversed Bush’s “keep everything secret you have any nominal reason to” policy toward Freedom of Information Act requests and replaced it with a presumption of disclosure. He also made all the right sounds about replacing a culture of secrecy with a culture of transparency.
3. He barred people who leave his administration from lobbying their former colleagues for as long as he is in office. I believe this practice is in no small part responsible for the tight integration of the government with the military-industrial complex for the last eight years.
4. He banned every appointee from receiving any gifts from lobbyists or lobbying organizations. No more Scottish golfing junkets, assholes.
5. He banned lobbyists for coming to work for the agencies they lobbied for two years. That will mean fewer lobbyists directly running the bureaucracies that are supposed to regulate the industries they previously worked for.
There are a lot of things that could go wrong, a lot of things Obama could not do or do wrong, but this isn’t rhetoric: it’s concrete, legally-binding steps the new President is taking, and so far they’re all exactly right as far as I’m concerned.
Here’s hoping tomorrow is as full of hope. 
