A Wish List for Obama

This week, the President placed a ban on oil and gas drilling in large parts of the country's Arctic and Atlantic waters and he dismantled a dormant Bush-era Muslim registry program that civil rights advocates feared could be used by the Trump administration. 

But what else could President Obama do before January 20th? This week, we check in with advocates and experts about what the President might do to safeguard some basic American principles and the tools the White House has at its disposal. 

• First, Daniel Weiner of the Brennan Center's Democracy Program urges the President to issue an executive order requiring large government contractors to disclose their political spending. 
• Then, we consider the President's power to declassify and disclose information about the government's surveillance apparatus and the drone program with Pratap Chatterjee, managing editor of the public interest group Corp Watch. 
• The Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg has been covering the Guantanamo detention camp since it opened in 2002. She discusses what can still be done to close the prison now, eight years after the President pledged to do so.
• Author and law professor Mark Osler says Obama can still do more on clemency, and explains the extraordinary power of presidents to send a message with pardons.
• Finally, a small army of volunteer archivists are working to preserve government climate change research before Trump takes office. We hear from Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, on a larger project to archive government websites during presidential transitions: the End of Term Web Archive. 

Song: 

Uluwati by John Zorn & The Dreamers