What I want Obama to do his first week in office...

Along with several other commenters I saw here, I think that the president should be able to multi-task. I disagreed somewhat with the priorities and the wording of others, so here's my shopping list for his first week
or two:

1. close Guantanamo -- this should be relatively easy. Treat all prisoners as normal enemy combatants or, for those who committed crimes while out of uniform, try them for those crimes. Where appropriate, try people for war crimes. (I don't call being a chauffeur for Osama Bin Laden a "war crime." Do you? Let the slob go!) Justice delayed is justice denied. We need an end to this nightmare at once.
2. announce a plan to rework the information AND electrical grids in the USA to be terrorist-resistant and an accompanying plan to have the United States 50% less dependent on fossil fuel by 2012 without resorting to nuclear alternatives (Obama already promised to make the country energy independent by 2012... if he can do that, he can do this). For those who believe in "pay as you go", reduce or scrap the "Joint Strike Fighter" (which the USA is literally bribing NATO members to buy) or put in an amendment that says that, for each $1.00 spent on weapon systems, $0.05 has to be spent on infrastructure maintenance or improvements. While we're at it, announce to the world that we are going to 8-byte TCP/IP in 2012. He can only announce a plan and request a budget to accomplish it, but I want him to do that much.
3. Pardon Dubya for the crime of conspiracy to commit wiretapping (this will still leave him liable for civil penalties where damage can be shown... I am wishing for a huge class-action suit with punitive damages, but that's not being realistic...) The goal here is to "reach across the aisle" and start the healing while acknowledging
   that a crime was committed. Don't pardon Dick Cheney or Roberto Gonzales. Leave them dangling.
4. Give amnesty to everyone but Dubya and Cheney who asks or a pardon who administered torture under direct orders. The way that it was rigged was such that any soldier who was ordered to torture
   was ordered to ask a military lawyer whether it was legal. Military lawyers were ordered to say that it was legal. Punishing anyone but those at the top would be an ethical quagmire. Congress already rigged it so that Dubya and Cheney can't be prosecuted for torture. The law protecting soldiers might have loopholes. As far as I could tell, the CIA torture is not covered at all. (Personally, I would have quit rather than be a torturer, but I digress...)
5. Ask Congress to pass bills that:
   • restore habeas corpus for everyone in the USA (this would be taken care of by the repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act)
   • do away with the USA PATRIOT Act ("USA PATRIOT" is an acronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism")
   • make torture, including mental torture and water-boarding, unequivocally and immutably against the law. Currently, the law on torture does not cover interrogation by the CIA and can be changed by
     introducing classified portions of the Army Field Manual. This was done by the Bush administration.
   • make it unlawful for the NSA to spy on American citizens without a court order. This is the way the laws read back in the halcyon pre-Dubya days. The NSA worksfor the USA, not on the USA.
   • do away with the top end tax breaks (that's pretty much what he said that he would do on taxes)
   • reinstate the estate tax for amounts over $1,000,000 (and make that figure relevant by tying it to the minimum wage, e.g., "140,000 hours of the minimum wage" That figure would be close to 80
     years worth of 8 hour days at 220 days a year)

   Note that I do not insist that he actually get these items passed... That's Congress's job. I just want him to ask politely and promise to sign such legislation promptly and with gusto.

6. announce that he will follow the War Powers Resolution during his tenure as the President. (see "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution" because newvine trampled my links
7. send me a nice letter thanking me for my list and promising to do every item on it! (Okay... I would settle for him just doing it, but I'd really get a kick out of a letter like that...)

I think a lot of the other things he promised are important, too, but this is what I would like to see during week one. I think that energy independence and independence from fossil fuels is more urgent than health care reform, education reform, etc., and all of those issues will require a lot of haggling among legislators. Submitting a budget and a plan would be concrete and visible. It would establish him as someone "serious about change" rather than being an "all hat and no cattle" reformer.