Traditionally the first official act a new president does right after being sworn in is to sign an executive order.CNN has a good article, here, discussing the controversial decisions that Obama may change from the Bush administration. The video is also a good discussion.
If you want to see all executive orders since 1937, click here. Two of the more famous executive orders are Truman's one integrating the military and Clinton's "Don't ask don't tell."
3 comments:
One notable omission was Obama's vow to shut down Guantanamo Bay, something that has been going on for far too long and has proven to show a black mark on the current human rights record of America.
If Obama promises to use this Executive Orders, it will be showing a less America-first view and more of a international view. I think Obama has realized that implementing views that lack on seeing the effect of the orders, as Bush did, shows that his desire to have the U.S. be a global player, not a global bully.
I think that Obama should erase some of Bush's executive orders, like stem cell research and planned parenthood. For stem cell research, you do not always have to kill a human embryo to gain stem cells. I have talked to a professor at Northwestern University who is taking stem cells from bone marrow and manipulating it to grow to 64 times its size so that it will flake off into platelets. These platelets can then be used to help cancer patients after radiation and chemo treatments. The cells can come from the patient themselves, so it is an exact match, not from some dead baby. Also, women should have the right to choose abortion, and the government should help women make the choice, not make it for them. If Obama does erase some executive orders, he will bring the change the country elected him for and work to move American into a modern and different era.
Bush never banned stem cell research, he just banned funding for embryonic stem cell research. His order was written because "(b) it is critical to establish moral and ethical boundaries to allow the Nation to move forward vigorously withmedical research, while also maintaining the highest ethical standards and respecting human life and human dignity;
(c) the destruction of nascent life for research violates the principle that no life should be used as a mere means for achieving the medical benefit of another;
(d) human embryos and fetuses, as living members of thehuman species, are not raw materials to be exploited orcommodities to be bought and sold..."
This ban on funding even allows for stem cell research in the most ethical way possible. Obama shouldn't erase that order, because i too fear that allowing embryonic stem cell research would allow for unethical uses of embryos and fetuses.
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