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White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the move was made out of “one abundance of caution” in seeking the advice with White House Counsel Greg Craig. Obama’s second swearing in, devoid of pomp, took fort at 7:35 p.jumble. in the presence of a few aides and a tidings pool. The chief justice was wearing a court clothe. “Are you ready to take the sworn statement?” Roberts said. “I am,” Obama declared, “and we’re going to do it very slowly.”

It capped a packed first abounding day for the 44th president that began at 8:35 a.m., when he entered the Oval Office

In the top desk drawer lay an mount inscribed, “To: 44, From: 43.” He sat alone and understand that traditional private memorandum from his predecessor, President Bush.

Another new-president tradition dating to George Washington: The Obamas attended a prayer spiritual obedience at Washington’s National Cathedral.

He in addition celebrated a political victory as his former presidential primary rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, was confirmed by the Senate to the degree that secretary of declare through a vote of 94-2.

He appeared to be persuading full steam ahead upon plans to halt military-commission trials at Guant

Obama also found time to call four Middle Eastern leaders Wednesday morning: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama thought it was important “on his first promised time in office to communicate his commitment to nimble engagement in pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace.”

In the afternoon, the first couple greeted visitors to an open house designed to signal a White House accessible to the indefinite society. Two hundred people won invitations that aides said were distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

“Welcome, enjoy yourself,” Obama told person visitor. “Roam around. Don’t break anything.”

Obama announced at a swearing-in ceremony for White House prop and Cabinet officials that he would freeze the remunerate of White House employees who have effect more than $100,000 a year. He told his senior staff that given the relating to housekeeping meteorological character, “it’s what’session required of you at this trice.”

He signed two executive orders and three memorandums to implement the pay freeze, ethics and public-records changes.

The morals fit condition prohibits executive-branch employees from accepting gifts from lobbyists. It prohibits anyone who leaves the administration from lobbying the executive branch “by reason of as long as I am president,” Obama said. It also precludes former lobbyists hired by his administration from dealing with agencies on matters they lobbied about for two years.

A second methodize revokes an executory order signed by Bush in 2001 that limited release of former presidents’ records, and replaces it with strange language aimed at greater degree transparency. Obama’s order could expand public addition to the records of Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as other former leaders, aforesaid Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

“It’s extraordinary that a new president would address this issue on his first full day in office,” Aftergood said. “It signifies the lofty importance he attaches to open, liable conduct. The renovated order suggests President Obama will take a narrow inspect of executive privilege and assert it in a much more limited way than what we’ve seen in the recent past.”

Bush’s order gave former presidents broad ability to claim charged with execution deliver and to assign others

Another Obama memo issued Wednesday appears to rescind a 2001 memo by Bush’s then-Attorney General John Ashcroft giving agencies broad legal shield to reject public-disclosure requests.

“For a diffuse time now, there’s been too much secrecy in this city,” Obama said. “This administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but with those who seek it to be known.”

Obama met with his economic advisers, and House Republicans asked him for a meeting as soon for example today to talk about their social as semblage’s competing economic-stimulus prepare. And he met in the Situation Room with his defense secretary, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others to discuss Iraq and public security.

Obama has said that without interruption his first day he’d ask military officials for a plan to withdraw combat troops from Iraq across a 16-month period and redeploy some to Afghanistan.

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