Here's a list of 10 things (among many) that the next president should do to help bring this country back to its founding principles (in no particular order):
1. Place a 15-year (at most) limit on the classification of anything.
2. Open up all meetings concerning public policy to (gasp) the public.
3. Annul all signing statements since Jan. 20, 2001; and confine their provenance to explaining how the executive will enforce a law.
4. Review and annul (where necessary) all Executive Orders since Jan. 20, 2001 (and it would probably be a good thing to review all EOs going back at least to the Reagan era).
5. Disavow recess appointments and urge Congress to pass a law making them illegal.
6. Urge Congress to pull out of NAFTA, CAFTA, and other so-called "free trade" agreements.
7. Evacuate all overseas bases.
8. Slash the military budget by a factor or 10.
9. Dismantle the covert ops arms of all the intelligence agencies, and assert that the president does not have the power to authorize such activities outside of a declared war.
10. Begin dismantling all nuclear weapons.
A few more have occurred to me [Feb 11]:
11. Urge Congress to repeal the PATRIOT and Military Commission Acts.
12. Restore habeas corpus.
13. Stop interfering in the internal politics of other countries (this last is prompted by the story I'm listening to now on Democracy Now about the US funneling money to anti-Morales parties in Bolivia and asking Peace Corp volunteers to spy on Venezuelans).
[Added Feb 14]:
14. Urge Congress to repeal its granting of immunity to the telcoms that broke the law in allowing the Bush Administration to wiretap their customers without wiretaps.
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