* Issue an executive order that ends so-called extraordinary rendition -- the practice of sending an alleged terrorist to another country to be held and questioned -- and revokes a 2007 order that reauthorized the CIA's detention and interrogation program.
* Issue an order that a single standard be used in interrogating terrorism suspects. The military is bound by restrictions that forbid coercive and extreme methods, but the intelligence services are not.
* Scale back amendments passed this year to the federal law that governs the surveillance of foreign agents, and which provided retroactive immunity from lawsuits to the nation's largest telecommunications companies. Obama supported the amendments but also opposed granting immunity. Until now, he probably did not know the extent to which the surveillance program has provided valuable information.
* Conduct a formal review of Bush administration legal policy and decisions made on interrogation and detention. The White House has been reluctant to make public memos and other papers documenting its conclusions that all of its anti-terrorism programs were within the law.
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joliphant@tribune.com
