Posted on 01/21/2009 6:56:37 PM PST by Red Steel
Barack Obama's first acts as president included signing three orders today that could open public access to documents and records that had been closed off during the Bush administration.
Obama reversed George W. Bush's restrictions on access to records of former presidents. He also told the Justice Department to write new guidance to agencies on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to improve transparency, and gave top officials in his administration four months to create a new "Open Government Directive" that he said would go beyond the requirements of the open records law.
If the new rules are followed within the government, they could open scores of records that have been closed for years to the public and reporters. Some agencies, with the encouragement of the Bush administration's legal advisers in the Justice Department, have reached deep into FOIA's exemptions to withhold information.
During the military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, for example, the names of drugs forcibly administered to prisoners were withheld, claiming they would create "an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" -- one of the law's reasons for rejection. News organizations and local citizen groups have had little access to information on toxic chemical spills that used to be readily available on the Internet. And agencies have tried to rebuff The Post and other news organizations on such requests as the schedules of high-level officials, the names and salaries of political appointees, and inspection results for government-owned or subsidized housing.
-snip-
The two memoranda to agency heads reverse the Bush administration's policy of rejecting requests for records whenever there is a justification in the loosely worded Freedom of Information Act.
One of Obama's memos says: "The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.
(Excerpt) Read more at voices.washingtonpost.com ...
He my be putting his own life in jeopardy with some of This BS Hillary and Bill still have contact info for Graig Livingston
Or what about us acquiring intelligence on Obama’s buddies in CAIR?
Zero himself is excluded I’m sure.
I think we should start filing FOIAs for everything we can think of. Test Obama’s new rule.
I want the FBI files on her father ~ he was a Siciliano Protectore ya’ know.
Moscow and Bejing would have a field day, “face of doubt” eh. I can’t see this happening.
Let’s start with your Blackberry emails.
“Piglosi is jonesing to try him on “war crimes.”
What would a Communist revolution be, without show trials?/s
My thoughts exactly: I just had a huge wailing argument through e mail with an old “friend” who I hadn’t seen for 30 years, who sent me an earlier WaPo article on the same subject. This Bush-and-Cheney hating fellow assumes that a great many incriminating e mails passing back and forth amongst Bush appointees are going to reveal great substance to his claim that Bush lied to get us into war, and that some intelligence was withheld at the expense of only that intelligence which supported Bush’s war plans.
There is no irony in his perspective that perhaps some intelligence is weighed relative to other intelligence, and that, hard as the choice might be, one has to err on the side of safety.
This BUSH LIED thesis is not only impossible to prove, regardless of what one thinks of Bush, it is unlikely ANY President , through the agency of his own Justice Dept. will reveal ANYTHING that directly incriminates him as a “LIAR”. Among other things that’s what I was trying to tell this guy, and after a few more e mails from him which read like classic Leftist snarky snarliness, he told me “Yeah, you’re pissing me off. Let’s call off the emails”. But earlier he had managed to liken Cheney to Stalin, and badmouth Republicans as being friends with “anti-Castro Cubans”, and support Gore and his global warming scam. So I knew he was clueless anyway.
Are you kidding? He won’t even release his COLB.
I think so, too.
How would we go about doing this?
Anybody wanna make a project out of this?
Draft a few sample plans, then figure out ways
to publicize our passionate committment to Obamaian FOIA
transparency, and get ALL HIS RECORDS TOO!
I think so, too.
How would we go about doing this?
Anybody wanna make a project out of this?
Draft a few sample plans, then figure out ways
to publicize our passionate committment to Obamaian FOIA
transparency, and get ALL HIS RECORDS TOO!
This is all horse s**t.
The new rule is, Obama will disclose everything, unless Eric Holder, the pay-for-play pardon promoter Obama appointed as AG, tells him not to.
“Hey, Eric. You don’t want me to disclose that conversation I had with the Hamas financial guy and the briefcase with the you-know-what he gave to my banker in Buenos Aires, do you?”
“Oh, no sir, Mr. President. Don’t disclose it. I will have thought up and written a memo about a constitutional excuse, I mean reason, by 3:00 today.
“That’s what I thought you would say, Eric.... and if anyone asks, we both take the 5th.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President.”
BOHICA!
Not the now and forever president.
What an ass. Transparency a must for everyone but º.
Marxist!
No, I think that they are still after those records from Cheney’s energy meetings. There is nothing illegal or damaging in them, most likely. I think that this is a question of presidential powers. The Bush administration left office without producing papers that a judge ordered produced.
This will go to the supreme court. You can bet on it.
Oh, never mind...that's a media leak job.
How ‘bout the Clinton Marc Rich papers? Hillary emails between her and Vince Foster? emails between Clinton Ron Brown, or Ron Brown’s secretary that was found dead in her office?
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