Good point:

On a more serious note, why—pray?—do we connive at isolating our presidents, by taking away their ability even to keep a journal (might be subpoenaed!), email (see above) and now, their connective tissue to the outside world? Sure, they have access to the media. They can turn on a television or pick up a newspaper, but that’s not the same as being able to receive a message from someone who used to wipe their runny nose, saying, WHAT IN NAME OF ALL THAT’S HOLY R U DOING, INVADING IRAQ, NUMBSKULL!!!???

Also from the article is speculation that if Obama were allowed to keep his Blackberry that implicit endorsement could be worth $25 million.

Link via If the President’s BlackBerry Goes Missing – The Daily Beast .

There’s an interesting op-ed piece up on The Nation today concerning the steps that Obama can and should undertake in order to roll back the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.” Concerning the Bush administration’s policy it writes that:

Unfortunately, from the start the United States conflated its lone real enemy, Al Qaeda, with a panoply of unrelated states and organizations, some Islamist and some secular, creating a mythical bloc of evil-doers under the heading of what John McCain called, redundantly, “radical Islamic extremism.” In the mix, Bush rolled up Iran, Saddam’s Iraq, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabis, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, various Pakistani Islamist groups, and others into one big terrorist ball of wax. Predictably, and aided by the anti-Muslim prejudices of the Christian right, it became a Crusade against Islam, at least in as seen through the lens of people living in the Middle East and South Asia. No wonder that anti-American sentiment throughout the region reached all-time highs.

To me this seems to be the most significant thing that Obama can work toward changing. Regardless of whether he continues the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and irrespective of what his policy on the Israel/Gaza conflict is he needs to clarify that the United States is not waging a war against Islam, but rather a war against those that seek disruption and violence. This is something that the Bush administration left all too vague at points and consequently led to the perception that the U.S. was waging a “Crusade against Islam.”

Link via Obama and the Middle East, Part I.

If you don’t already know about it then you should check out the Obama administrations transition website. As part of this the administration has a page where anyone can recommend policy issues that they see as in need of addressing. Who knows how much the administration will take these polls into account, but they may give some department heads a little more leverage in advocating their position with Obama.

Vote for improvements to the rail system here.

Responding to the notion that investment in infrastructure won’t bring the same kind of return as investment in schools Matthew Yglesias writes:

This is largely independent of the stimulus question, but insofar as we’re looking to spend money it definitely makes sense to find smart ways to use stimulus funds to kick-start some of the needed activity. That’s not to deny the importance of education. Rather, smart investments in education are in exactly the same basket as smart investments in physical infrastructure—both will help the country enormously over the long-run.

I think he nails it here. As big of a proponent for education that I am (after all, I do want to teach) it simply doesn’t make sense to argue that infrastructure improvements don’t bring long-term benefits to the economy.

Link via Matthew Yglesias » The Enduring Impact of a Bridge .

Interesting graph detailing the surge and drop in Obama’s job approval ratings.