A lichen found in the Channel Island National Park in California is the first species to be named after President Barack Obama.  It looks like orange moss and grows very slowly.  Lichen are the result of fungi and algae living together, and there are about 17,000 species of lichen in the world.

Kerry Knudsen, lichen curator of the University of California, Riverside Herbarium, discovered the species in 2007 while doing a lichen survey on Santa Rosa Island in California.  “I named it Caloplaca obamae to show my appreciation for the president’s support of science and science education,” he said.  “I made the final collections of C. obamae during the suspenseful final weeks of President Obama’s campaign for the United States presidency.”

Caloplaca obamae is the first organism to be named in honor of President Obama.  Note that former president George W. Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney were also honored with species named after them.  Appropriately, both had slime-mold beetles named in their honor.

Story at LiveScience
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Where were our fiscally-conservative Republicans when President Bush and the U.S. Congress took a budget surplus and turned it into a $1 trillion budget deficit, and doubled our national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion?

The Republican concern for fiscal responsibility in the recent budget debate rings hollow.  I think it’s clear that NONE of our elected officials on either side of the aisle have any clue what it means to balance budgets and be financially responsible.

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President Obama continued his crusade of change by overturning a last-minute Bush administration regulation that weakened the Endangered Species Act.

The Bush rule basically put the fox in charge of the hen house.  The regulation stated there was no need to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Services on development projects if the project wouldn’t harm endangered species.  The problem is the federal agency responsible for the development would determine what “no harm” meant, instead of the scientists whose job it is to protect endangered species.

Obama stated he had restored “the scientific process to its rightful place at the heart of the Endangered Species Act, a process undermined by past administrations…  For more than three decades, the Endangered Species Act has successfully protected our nation’s most threatened wildlife, and we should be looking for ways to improve it, not weaken it.”

Environmental groups praised Obama’s action.  “President Obama’s announcement will allow [the Endangered Species Act] to do what it was intended: protect our nation’s endangered plants and animals,” said Andrew Wetzler, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Endangered Species Program.

Story at CNN

Yesterday the Obama administration released a series of memos written by U.S. Department of Justice lawyers under the Bush administration.  The memos show that the Bush administration secretly concluded after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that it had almost unlimited authority to wiretap Internet and telephone, restrict free speech, and use the U.S. military domestically against suspected terrorists.

For example, an October 2001 memo by deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo and special counsel Robert Delahunty says that “the president has the legal and constitutional authority to use military force within the United States to respond to and combat future acts of terrorism, and that the Posse Comitatus Act does not bar deployment.”  It also approves censorship of newspapers and the Internet, saying “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.”

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Barack Obama made good on his pledge for “Change” by issuing numerous executive orders in his first few days in office to overturn eight years of Bush legacy.

Obama decreed that interrogators must follow techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual when questioning terrorism suspects, though he also ordered a review that could allow CIA interrogators to use more harsh interrogation methods for high-value targets.

Obama ordered the closure of the Guantanamo detention center within a year, as well as any remaining secret CIA “black site” prisons in foreign countries.  He then met with top military officials at the White House and asked them to draw up plans to “execute a responsible military drawdown from Iraq.”

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