The Washington Post’s Candace Rondeaux reports that Aghan President Hamid Karzai appealed to president-elect Barack Obama to end U.S. airstrikes that are killing Aghhan civilians. An airstrike in southern Afghanistan this week killed 40 and wounded 28– including many attending a wedding.

Much to the consternation of Afghanistan, the U.S. has been ramping up airstrikes since the summer. Karzai, up for re-election himself next year, has exerted effort in distancing himself from the air campaign. Regardless of Obama’s election, one would have thought the worst of the airstrikes to have been over by now: top military commander in Afghanistan, David McKiernan, has repeatedly called for a decrease.-MB

The election of Barack Obama and Democratic gains in Congress might get the Food and Drug Administration out of the stone age. Democrats in Congress have spent the past year battling with the Bush administration for FDA budget increases. The agency simply doesn’t have the staff scientists, modern technology or number of inspectors needed to police the global marketplace.

The Wall Street Journal’s Alicia Mundy reports that the next FDA could have finally have sufficient funding. Apparently, though, Congressional Democrats are trying to emphasize the need for the agency to regulate tobacco products. This makes some sense, though it would be nice to first see what a fully funded FDA could do with food and drugs.-MB

Past presidents have inherited wars and an economic crisis. But no one has ever been saddled with an issue quite like the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin and Siohban Gorman report about what Obama might do about Guantanamo, its 250 or so detainees, and the military commission trials started by the Bush administration.

Even Democrats who have wanted Guantanamo closed down have not come up with a way to handle the detainees there. As for the military commission trials, Bravin and Gorman say this: "Prosecutors have said higher-ups pushed to get the long-delayed trials under way before Bush leaves office…hoping to lock the Obama administration into seeing them through."

But while the Bush administration may want to tie Obama’s hands, civil libertarians demand the president-elect make a clean break. The ACLU has said that on Obama’s first day he ought to issue three executive orders: close Guantanamo, cease and prohibit the use of torture, and end renditions (the practice of moving a detainee to a country, such as Egypt, where they might be tortured). Tellingly, though, even the ACLU isn’t pushing a solution about how to best deal with the captured detainees.-MB

Barack Obama’s election to the presidency Tuesday night was what the The New York Times called a "national catharsis."

At least here in Washington, D.C., people poured onto U Street when Obama was announced the winner and joyously danced and hugged strangers and spontaneously chanted for about six hours. The scene was not that of angry retaliation against George W. Bush or relief that Bush’s presidency was to end. It was elation to be part of an election of a black president and a president who represents a sincere push for social change through the medium of electoral politics.

The U Street "happy riot" made national news. The last time U Street made the national news was for riots of a different kind that destroyed the neighborhood in 1968 following Martin Luther King’s assassination.

But the news cycle yesterday abruptly turned from trying to capture the importance of Obama’s election to the selection of Obama’s White House transition team.  John Podesta, the founder of the Center for American Progress and former Bill Clinton chief of staff, will head that team.

And Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) was offered the Chief of Staff position in an Obama White House. The New York Times Peter Baker and Jeff Zeleny report that Emanuel will likely accept the post, but has some reservations about giving up his powerful role in the Democratic Congressional caucus.

Baker and Zeleny offer some rumors about who else might be named to Obama’s cabinet: old Clinton Treasury Sec. Larry Summers as the new Obama Treasury Sec., Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) as the Secretary of State and Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) as secretary for Housing and Urban Development.

It’s only day one of a 77-day transition. Still, it appears so far that Obama, "the change candidate," is embracing either old Clinton hands, veteran Congressional Democrats, or, in the case of Emanuel, both. The naming of Podesta to head the transition team is perhaps the greatest irony of all.

Many called Podesta’s think thank, the Center for American Progress, the "government in waiting" for Hillary Clinton. But when Obama passed Clinton in the Democratic primary, the Democratic establishment, even at CAP, was quick to read the tea leaves.

As a result, while Obama might be a fresh, new face as president, his transition team seems transported from the Clinton ’90’s.-MB