Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse the president on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.
A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.
I have advocated something like this since Bush was “reelected” in 2004.
Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush’s controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases such as Parkinson’s. Bush’s August 2001 decision pleased religious conservatives who have moral objections to the use of cells from days-old human embryos, which are destroyed in the process.
And I have long advocated non-stem-cell hospitals for neocons, Rebublicans, and other authoritarian shitbags.
The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal, said Cecile Richards, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he rescinded the Reagan-era regulation, known as the Mexico City Policy, but Bush reimposed it.
And California will gets its Clean Air Act exemption. Change we can believe in, my friends.
That is MOST excellent.
Posted by: HelenWheels | November 09, 2008 at 11:30 AM
There goes his legacy!
Now all he'll have left is the stuff that can't legislated away, like the Hurricane Katrina response and the wars in the Middle East.
Posted by: Lew Scannon | November 09, 2008 at 11:48 AM
It's in the bag!
Posted by: mandt | November 09, 2008 at 08:34 PM
Holy cow! It IS your birthday!
Posted by: tata | November 10, 2008 at 10:11 AM
The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion
Somewhere in Wasilla, Bristol Palin muffles a sob.
Posted by: actor212 | November 10, 2008 at 05:03 PM
Oh, hell yes! All those little executive orders that Georgie slipped in? Fugedaboutit!
Posted by: heydave | November 11, 2008 at 09:22 AM
I wish on 1/21/09 that there was an indictment to drag this whole administration into court for its crimes.
Posted by: willis | November 15, 2008 at 05:45 AM