Some Good News

I'm tired of the Prop 8 post-mortems. I tend to see things in very simple terms, because they usually are basically very simple. We were out-lied and out-spent. Our weakness here is that we tell the truth, and most people will believe whatever the last person they spoke to told them, especially if it's bad, so the rush of money at the last minute from the right did us in. Remember, they're playing Republican politics. We're being civilized. Of course they won.

However, from hilzoy, a note about this article from WaPo:

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 White House policies 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.

In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office.

"The kind of regulations they are looking at" are those imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget. The list of executive orders targeted by Obama's team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush's appointees rush to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy.

There is hope. Now, if Obama will override the torture memos and the "legal opinions" from Bush's Regent University Law School graduates granting the president unlimited power to do whatever he wants, I might even be able to begin to believe in him.