Obama Plans to Hit the Ground Running, It Seems

Obama Plans to Hit the Ground Running, It Seems

From Investor's Business Daily:

Marching Orders

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, November 10, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Transition: President-elect Obama isn't planning to wait for Congress to pass his agenda. On Day One, he plans to rescind Bush executive orders on everything from embryonic stem cell research to offshore drilling.

When minority Republicans seemed to force congressional Democrats to abandon efforts to extend the legislative ban on offshore drilling that expired on Oct. 1, it was considered a pro-drilling victory. In July, President Bush had lifted an 18-year presidential ban on offshore oil drilling. Soon, it was hoped, it would be drill, baby, drill.

The Democrats knew otherwise. They'd run out the clock knowing that a President Obama and a re-elected Democratic Congress would undo this right-wing mischief. As Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., noted at a Sept. 18 press conference: "Nobody's going to be drilling offshore in the next three months."

Judging by statements made by John Podesta, nobody's going to be drilling anywhere domestically for a very long time. On "Fox News Sunday," Obama's transition chief called the federal Bureau of Land Management's plan to open about 360,000 acres of public land in Utah to oil and gas drilling "a mistake."

"They want to have oil and gas drilling in some of the most sensitive, fragile lands in Utah," Podesta said. Expect Obama to rescind that action and reissue the executive order banning offshore drilling in protected waters.

The Washington Post reports that the Obama transition team has a list of 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders scheduled to be undone with a stroke of Obama's pen on alleged climate change, embryonic stem cell research and other issues.

Who was it that said, "Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Pretty cool, huh?" Oh, right Paul Begala during Clinton's administration.

Read the whole thing.

All those people who keep saying that Obama will have to move to the middle in order to get anything done want to reconsider?