An action shot of the left hand that controls the Executive branch.*

Some friends and I have been interested in following and documenting Obama's actions now that he's President. We're curious to know whether he's living up to his campaign promises, and we thought it'd be useful to keep them in one easy-to-find place.

We started noting what we'd read in the news and sending it back and forth in an email thread, but really -- what is this, 1999?  So I started a blog, and invited the friends as moderators. Unfortunately, we found that once our days picked up for a few hours, we quickly fell behind and started missing events. Not a very useful tool if it's ad hoc and incomplete.

Obama's first signature as president -- Jan. 20, 2009.

• Politifact is useful for tracking campaign promises and is being kept up to date.
• FactCheck.org is great for all recent claims made by politicians or floating around the rumor mill.
• FiveThirtyEight.com is Nate Silver's political stats and analysis site -- the best in the business.
• Whitehouse.gov tracks the various executive orders, which is kinda cool, too. So far...

EXECUTIVE ORDERS

January 22, 2009

• Review and Disposition of Individuals Detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and Closure of Detention Facilities
• Review of Detention Policy Options
• Ensuring Lawful Interrogations

January 21, 2009

• Presidential Records
• Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel

PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDA

January 22, 2009

• Review of the Detention of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri

January 21, 2009

• Freedom of Information Act
• Pay Freeze
• Transparency and Open Government

Still, Chris couldn't find a blog or other site that's just tracking what Obama does, what actions he approves or denies each day. Another oddity -- Kottke (citing others) also notes that once the new White House site goes up, the prior president's site disappears -- *poof* -- and is moved over to that president's library site.

All problems seem strange, given the ubiquity of this type of information. If anyone finds resources or tools that are particularly useful, please post in the comments.

* The President's watch is a Jorg Gray JGC6500 Chronograph Watch. Or you could go here and pay double...

** Many thanks to those willing and able to dedicate themselves to this work. Also key is Obama's dedication to transparency and the open, free exchange of information. So refreshing.

[First image via The Big Picture. Second image via Reuters, ffffound.]

Mary (in profile) and Sun (front and center) are intercontinental when they eat french toast.

A couple of my friends -- law school classmates -- are giving back by working for the public good in southeast Asia. They got together in Cambodia to watch the inauguration, and had their photo snapped and blown up with a half-page, above-the-fold article in the Phenom Penh Post!**

Mary is working in Chiang Mai, Thailand, experimenting in the new frontier of corporate social responsibility and setting up a new ice cream business dedicated to supporting needy children in the region. She's posting adventure updates on her blog.

Sun is working as a law clerk for the UN in Cambodia. She explains,

The United Nations Assistant to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT) provides the international component to the “hybrid” court, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The tribunal was set up in 2003 jointly by the UN and the Cambodian government to prosecute senior members of the former Khmer Rouge regime. Among the crimes charged are violations of the Cambodian penal code, genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the Geneva Convention. 

[It's] a clerkship, but on the international level. doing research, writing memos, orders, decisions and stuff for the pre-trial judges. Ok, that's familiar. But throw in this hybrid tribunal and parts of the civil law system (since cambodian criminal procedure is based on the french civil system from the 1950s) and the learning curve is steep.

Sun is blogging, too. Check her out here.

Great to see that they're getting to hang out and enjoy life abroad. Now if they can just keep the damn paparazzi out of their way, they'll be set. Celebrity is nice for a minute, but believe you me, it gets old fast.

* Caption refers to a line from The Move by the Beastie Boys.

** Their friend who was interviewed by the Post was misquoted by the reporter!

What I said to journalist I liked McCain personally, but I don't like Republican Policy: 1) War in Iraq and 2) Anti-abortion. He misquoted my opinions -- anyways now I turned to support Obama.

There's a new sheriff in town.

Use of torture, the murder of habeas corpus, secrecy and the unilateral use of force. Over time, these are four of the most powerful memories we will have of President Bush, and they will linger as a stain on Americas past.

It was widely speculated that one of Obama's first actions as President would be to move towards closing Guantanamo. Still, Cheney (along with commentators on the Right) argued that Obama would enter his new post, see the daily security reports, and change his position, finding that the threat was real and imminent, that Guantanamo was central to our security.

What did the new President do?

Hours after taking office on Tuesday, President Barack Obama ordered military prosecutors in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals to ask for a 120-day halt in all pending cases. . . . 

The request would halt proceedings in 21 pending cases, including the death penalty case against five Guantanamo prisoners accused of plotting the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks in 2001.

An excellent start for the new President. Mark Day #1 down as a success. On to tomorrow...

[Image via The Big Picture.]

Inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander.

Written and recited by Elizabeth Alexander.* Transcript via the NY Times.
[Update: Formatted in much more authentic fashion here.]

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Critics are already voicing their opinions.

I loved it.

*More about Professor Alexander:

Alexander, a 2006 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for her work, American Sublime, will become the fourth poet to read a poem written especially for the occasion. (Robert Frost was the first at the Kennedy inauguration in 1960).

Alexander, who teaches in the African-American Studies Department at Yale University, recently told School Library Journal that as students and teachers watch the January 20 inaugural ceremony, she’s delighted that they’ll also reflect on the poem. “As a teacher who works with students daily, I think that it is wonderful that I will be contributing something to assist other teachers,” she says.

Returning to the Oval Office: truth, justice, and the American way.

Today's the day. Our first black President will take the oath of office with his hand on a Bible owned by the man who ended slavery in the U.S.

What a time to take over. W will fly away from the White House in his chopper, leaving his successor with an enormous mess.

Expectations for Obama are crazy. He's not a savior, but he is replacing cynacism with optimism, faith with reason, distrust of science with tech saavy, Machiavellian machinations with transparency.  And that's a great way to start.

Celebrations in San Francisco, this wonderful bastion of liberalism, will be in full swing.  Some even started a little early, making civic upgrades to usher in our new leader. Well done, team, well done.

Bush Street signs in San Francisco were changed to Obama down the entire length of Bush Street.

[Update: says Gidge "Thank artist Alex Zecca. He stickered the street signs from Presido to Grant... but police have made him remove them."]

* For more on Superman's famous line, see Truth, justice and (fill in the blank).

Just a reminder to enjoy the last day of W. He spent two full years of his presidency on vacation, but still managed to cause more than his fair share of trouble.

Harper's has put together an excellent, indexed retrospective of the Bush years (via Daring Fireball) and The Economist did a fantastic job recapping his body of work in their article George Bush's legacy: The frat boy ships out. Some highlights:

HE LEAVES the White House as one of the least popular and most divisive presidents in American history. At home, his approval rating has been stuck in the 20s for months; abroad, George Bush has presided over the most catastrophic collapse in America’s reputation since the second world war. The American economy is in deep recession, brought on by a crisis that forced Mr Bush to preside over huge and unpopular bail-outs.

America is embroiled in two wars, one of which Mr Bush launched against the tide of world opinion. The Bush family name, once among the most illustrious in American political life, is now so tainted that Jeb, George’s younger brother, recently decided not to run for the Senate from Florida. A Bush relative describes family gatherings as “funeral wakes”. . . .

Lack of curiosity also led Mr Bush to suspect intellectuals in general and academic experts in particular. David Frum, who wrote speeches for Mr Bush during his first term, noted that “conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House”. . . .

Relentless partisanship led to the politicisation of almost everything Mr Bush did. He used his first televised address to justify putting strict limits on federal funding for stem-cell research, and used the first veto of his presidency to prevent the expansion of that funding. He appointed two “strict constructionist” judges to the Supreme Court, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, turned his back on the Kyoto protocol, dismissed several international treaties, particularly the anti-ballistic-missile treaty, loosened regulations on firearms and campaigned against gay marriage. His energy policy was written by Mr Cheney with the help of a handful of cronies from the energy industry. His lacklustre attorney-general Alberto Gonzales, who was forced to resign in disgrace, was only the most visible of an army of over-promoted, ideologically vetted homunculi.

The Iraq war was a case study of what happens when politicisation is mixed with incompetence. A long-standing convention holds that politics stops at the ocean’s edge. But Mr Bush and his inner circle labelled the Democrats “Defeaticrats” whenever they were reluctant to support extending the war from Afghanistan to Iraq. They manipulated intelligence to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had close relations with al-Qaeda. This not only divided a country that had been brought together by September 11th; it also undermined popular support for what Mr Bush regarded as the central theme of his presidency, the war on terror.

And that's just the beginning. Read the rest here.

If you want to follow the Inaugural gala and participate online, some friends have helped set up a fantastic site dedicated to the occassion. Says the San Jose Mercury News:

LINK-live Presidential Inaugural Gala, Tuesday night:

It's billed as a party to celebrate technology serving humanity. Steven Chu, Lawrence Berkeley's Nobel laureate physicist and Obama's choice for energy secretary, is slated to receive "the nature award." You can attend virtually via www.linklive.org. And you can join the celebration online using Twitter (name: linklive; address: #linklive2009), ScribbleLive, Ustream and Flickr. We think we've got tickets, and would hate to miss Chu, the Bay Area's hottest — or is that coolest? — scientist.

* Had Lincecum somehow been let in, the first shoe thrown would have bored a hole in W's chest. That shoe, thrown with such extreme velocity, would have instantly cauterized the fatal wound. The Phenom would have used the second shoe to disarm and disable all of the Secret Service agents in the room, allowing him to escape.

Still, the rest of the Press Corps would be unable to follow through after Lincecum's super-human performance. They'd fail to score and would give up the game winning homer to Cheney with a fat pitch down the pipe in the top of the 8th.

Copied below, in chronological order starting with the most recent, are links to some of the finest gems I've been able to unearth from the vast wastes of the Internets. If you're like me, they'll be a cool drink of refreshing reason, with a chaser of sickening ohmygodOrwell'sfutureisheretoday.