Today advisors have told the Associated Press that one of Obama's first acts as president will be to close Gitmo. While the physical closing of Gitmo may take some time, they said, he's going to issue the executive order in "his first week in office -- and perhaps his first day."

Besides the obvious humanitarian reasons, that's a smart global PR move: the military prison at Guantanamo is a symbol of the fall of America's standing in the world.

Conservatives laughed about Obama's recent statement that closing Guantanamo would be "more difficult than I think a lot of people realize," implying that Obama was vacillating because he didn't really want to do it ("BACKTRACKING ON CLOSING GUANTANAMO BAY any time soon. Apparently he's concluded that it's not as easy as it sounded back during the campaign," "Good luck explaining that to the angry left," "He's finding that the issue of Guantanamo isn't quite as cut-and-dried as those on the left would have us believe," etc).