Happy 1st 100 Days, President Obama!

Today is President Barack Obama's 100th Day in office. 100 days since Barack Obama became the first African-American President of the United States. Wow.

When I moved from Washington DC to Chicago almost 9 years ago, it took me almost 100 days to get unpacked and believe me, my entire house is probably about the size of the Oval Office. Not only have President Obama and his wonderful family managed to get unpacked (okay, sure, their staff is just a little bigger than mine), get enrolled in school, get a dog, plant a garden and throw some fabulous parties, President Obama has managed to get some work done too.

In his first 100 days, President Obama has:

• signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law (click here for my take on it) as his first piece of legislation;
• signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act;
• extended health care coverage for 4 million uninsured children through SCHIP;
• announced that he would help approximately 9 million homeowners get better mortgage terms through his foreclosure prevention package;
• increased funding for education through the Head Start program and Pell Grants to college;
• announced the withdrawal of all combat forces in Iraq by August 2010;
• signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act;
• ordered the closing Guantanamo Bay prison camp with 1 year;
  
• attended the G-20 Summit and improved relationships with world leaders;
• successfully and with minimal blood shed fought off pirates;
• opened lines of communication with the American people in ways that no other administration has ever done including live streaming events and blogging;
  
• promised the world that the US will no longer engage in torture including water boarding;
• and remained cool, calm, and collected during it all which serves to reassure everyone that he is in control. We never see him lose his temper and his demeanor and body language give us all hope. While hope alone will not fix our problems, hope allows us to move forward from the paralysis of fear and take action.
  

Congratulations President Obama!

Yes, we've got some huge issues left to deal with including increasing unemployment, a Dow on incredibly shaky ground, two wars, an auto industry that's hanging on by a shredding thread, and the imminent pandemic known as Swine Flu. And clearly none of these problems will be solved overnight. But we're off to a great start.

More on President Obama's first 100 days in office:

• Obama's First 100 Days: 10 Achievements You Didn't Know About, Huffington Post
  
• One Hundred, New York Times
• Retrospective in Missouri, WhiteHouse.gov
• Delivering On Change, An Inside Look, WhiteHouse.gov
• Foundation for Change, BarackObama.com
  

Did Cheney Just Admit War Crimes?

Watch these video and decide for yourself. Although Cheney says at the beginning of the ABC video (which has the entire interview) that we don't torture, he then goes on to say that he personally approved the waterboarding against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which has been a war crime for years and punishable by death.

Watch the whole ABC interview here and then watch the video from Countdown with Keith Olberman below.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I am terribly offended by this. We must not let the Bush Administration rewrite history during their last 35 days in office. They committed crimes. Real and actual crimes. Crimes that killed people. Thousands of people. We went to war with Iraq based on lies that have been proven over and over and over again to have been lies.

We spoke out at the ballot box in November 2006 and 2008, but we are not done speaking out. We need to contact our Senators and Representatives and demand that the Bush Administration be held accountable for their actions.

We are better than who we have been the last 8 years. We must take this moral stand. The change we have demanded by electing Obama can't simply be a change of administration. It must be deeper than that in order for it to mean anything.