Saturday, November 08, 2008

ACLU plan for restoring U.S. civil rights

Day one steps are closing Guantanamo Bay, ceasing and prohibiting torture, ceasing and prohibiting extraordinary rendition; steps for the first 100 days include ending warrantless spying, watch lists, the Ashcroft doctrine on FOIA requests, monitoring of activists, the Real ID Act, the abortion gag rule, the death penalty, and faith-based initiatives.

At least one of Obama's transition teams is, at the very least, reviewing Bush's executive orders for constitutionality, which covers some elements of the above. Most, however, have been implemented by act of Congress, which will require Congressional action to repeal.

3 comments:

Misanthrope said...

Do you have a link to an article or an Obama website that talks about his transition team reviewing this plan? It would be great if true, but my google-fu hasn't turned anything up.

Lippard said...

Misanthrope: I thought I read that in the source which I read linking to the ACLU plan, but now I cannot remember what that was or find it myself.

I've rewritten the entry to cover what I can verify, which is that Obama has a transition team reviewing Bush's executive orders for constitutionality.

Michael Norton said...

It will be interesting to see if Bush's constitutional scholars (I'm looking at you, Yoo) continue to write papers expanding the theory of the "Unitary Executive" or if they fade into the woodwork.

I know which I'm betting on.