The first month of my Presidency ...

If I were Obama … in the first month of my Presidency, I would:

1. Order Gitmo closed within three months; transfer all prisoners to the D.C. area; publish their names, arrest data and current location; reclaim all farmed-out for questioning (torture) prisoners; publish all trial transcripts.

1a. Give Guantanamo back to Cuba; saves lots of money.

2. Order withdrawal of all U.S. military from Iraq, with deadline.

3. Order changes in airline passenger screening: shoes stay on; disabled people stay in wheel chairs; no touching the passengers; no detaining anybody for longer than 30 minutes.

4. Suspend the no-fly list so it can be reduced to a reasonable number of names; remove non-terrorists; limit who can add to the list.

5. Restore habeas corpus, no exceptions.

6. Ban warrant-less searches by any agency.

7. Ban warrant-less phone taps, in the U.S. and out.

7a. Destroy recordings of pillow-talk, etc., conversations.

8. Buy the Afghan opium crop. Destroy it. Hire Afghan farmers to grow ethanol-yielding crops. Same for Colombia, Mexico.

9. Rehire people who were kicked out of government service because of sexual orientation, especially Arabic-speakers.

10. Suspend the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule. Cancel any pending expulsions. Tell the homophobes to get over it or get out.

11. Assign special prosecutor to investigate claims of voter fraud.

12. Establish one-payer health-care experiment; sign up poverty-level uninsured, plus people 15% over poverty level. Tell insurance companies to shut up.

13. Freeze all foreclosures, retroactive to people who have not yet moved out, or whose houses are not yet occupied so that they can move back in. Roll back mortgages to the first-year interest rate and payment level.

14. Freeze all student-loan liens; restructure.

15. Tell California that if it still wants tougher auto-emission standards, it can have them; order EPA to comply. Tell Detroit puppets to get stuffed.

16. Freeze No Child Left Behind act. Tell companies profiting from testing to shut up.

17. Suspend all death-penalty prosecutions; study application of capital punishment as applied to race, mental status, poverty, specific crimes.

18. Remind everybody that “you can’t use the government to make people live by your religion.”

19. Offer two tax-free years to builders of solar farms and wind farms if they get permit process started within six months. Two more tax-free years if they begin construction within nine months.

19a. Offer tax-free years to builders of electricity storage and transfer systems if they start permit process and building within nine months.

19b. Whack states up longside the head if they screw around with permits. But, monitor environmental impacts, etc.

19c. Offer tax-free years to fuel-cell inventors and start pilot programs.

19d. Offer incentives to towns that create plug-ins for electric cars.

20. Suspend daylight saving time for two years to see if it actually saves anything.

21. Speed up handling of immigration requests. Shorten waiting periods. Reduce time for re-entry of people deported but now applying for visas.

21a. Introduce a form for illegals to fill out that becomes a reapplication for an expired visa or for a first visa. Available at Post Offices, other federal offices. No blow-back for applying.

22. Eliminate the deal whereby war-zone mercenaries aren’t covered by any laws, U.S. or Iraqi.

23. Spotlight the frequency of oil leaks and other dangers of off-shore oil drilling; clear the way for drilling.

24. Offer incentives to companies to build new oil refineries in the U.S., linked with alternative energy projects.

25. Increase aid to cities for mass-transit projects.

26. Go surfing.