Maine: Bush\

Good morning.

You can start your day - and hence your week - with this bracer by Paul Krugman:

As I read it, this dismissal - together with the continuing failure to announce any broad plans for bank restructuring - means that the White House has decided to muddle through on the financial front, relying on economic recovery to rescue the banks rather than the other way around. And with the stimulus plan too small to deliver an economic recovery ... well, you get the picture.

Sooner or later the administration will realize that more must be done. But when it comes back for more money, will Congress go along?

Republicans are now firmly committed to the view that we should do nothing to respond to the economic crisis, except cut taxes - which they always want to do regardless of circumstances.

h/t Harry Shearer

Via the Independent the lede says it all:

Less than a month after signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, President Barack Obama has quietly agreed to keep denying the right to trial to hundreds more terror suspects held at a makeshift camp in Afghanistan that human rights lawyers have dubbed "Obama's Guantanamo".

In a single-sentence answer filed with a Washington court, the administration dashed hopes that it would immediately rip up Bush-era policies that have kept more than 600 prisoners in legal limbo and in rudimentary conditions at the Bagram air base, north of Kabul.

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Apart from staff at the International Red Cross, human rights groups and journalists have been barred from Bagram, where former prisoners say they were tortured by being shackled to the ceiling of isolation cells and deprived of sleep.

Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sent this memo to every department and agency head:
This memorandum transmits the first installment of government-wide guidance for carrying out programs and activities enacted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ("Recovery Act") of 2009. Please bring this memorandum and attachment to the attention of any personnel within your organization who will be involved in these matters.

The Administration is committed to investing Recovery Act dollars with an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability so Americans know where their tax dollars are going and how they are being spent. The guidance issued today contains critical action steps that Federal agencies must take immediately to meet these objectives and to implement the Act effectively.

Today the Obama adminstration has overturned one of the last actions of Bush/Cheney that would have lifted the ban on offshore oil and gas drilling. From MSNBC this:

The Obama administration on Tuesday overturned another Bush-era energy policy, setting aside a draft plan to allow drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

"To establish an orderly process that allows us to make wise decisions based on sound information, we need to set aside" the plan "and create our own timeline," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced in a statement.

Alleging that the Bush administration "had torpedoed" offshore renewable energy in favor of oil and natural gas, Salazar said he was extending the public comment period by 6 months.

It will be of interest to learn how this affects the work of Gov. Baldacci's Ocean Energy Task Force.