By now you’ve heard that President Obama has issued orders to close Guantanamo Bay. He had clearly said several times during the campaign and transition that he would do so. Nevertheless, no end of lefties who have been reading between the President’s lines like soothsayers reading chicken entrails predicted he would not close Guantanamo Bay. That it may take a few months is understandable. It’s going to take some time for the new team to understand what’s really going on down there and to separate people who might really be dangerous from the innocents who got swept up in indiscriminate nets.

Michael Shear of the Washington Post also writes,

Sources familiar with the briefings said Obama also will sign two executive orders altering CIA detention and interrogation rules, limiting interrogation standards in all U.S. facilities worldwide to those outlined in the Army Field Manual, and prohibiting the agency from secretly holding terrorist detainees in third-country prisons.

In other words, he’s putting an end to torture and closing CIA “black sites.” Again, some on the Left — a minority, but a loud and annoying minority — doubted he would do these things, even though he said he would do them.

Also:

President Obama is moving quickly to undo the Bush administration’s regime of secrecy.

Yesterday, he repealed a 2001 executive order granting former presidents, and vice presidents, the ability to seal their papers forever.

It’s like he read my mind.