BARACK OBAMA has signed an executive order that shuts down Guantánamo Bay "as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the date of this order." Another executive order, highlighted by the Politico, goes further.


Glenn Greenwald, a libertarian-leaning constitutional lawyer, is overjoyed: the president is on track to "meet or actually exceed even the most optimistic expectations of civil libertarians for what he could or would do quickly." Indeed, the conventional wisdom after the election was that President Obama, by his choice of intelligence advisers and his vote for retroactive immunity for telecom companies that let the National Security Agency tap phones, had revealed that he wouldn't actually roll back many of Mr Bush's war-on-terror reforms. That underestimated the disregard Mr Obama had for Mr Bush's policies: the neoconservative assumption that Democrats need to talk and act tough, so as not to be blamed if things go wrong, is not shared by the new administration.

(Photo credit: AP)