Free Republic

Wither Sovereignty? Executive Order Amended to Immunize INTERPOL In America-Is The ICC Next? Last Thursday, December 17, 2009, The White House released an Executive Order "Amending Executive Order 12425." It grants INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) a new level of full diplomatic immunity afforded to foreign embassies and select other "International Organizations" as set forth in the United States International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945. By removing language from President Reagan's 1983 Executive Order 12425, this international law enforcement body now operates - now operates - on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the...

US Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday released hundreds of pages from files on Michael Jackson, revealing the agency assisted in the child molestation probes involving the late pop icon. Responding to requests from various media organisations, the FBI issued more than 300 pages of documents relating to Jackson, who died in June at the age of 50 following an overdose of prescription drugs. The documents contained no new information about Jackson's mysterious death, which is the subject of a criminal investigation targeting the singer's personal physician, Conrad Murray. However the papers reveal information about a 1992 extortion plot involving...

Conservative attorney Larry Klayman on Monday filed a lawsuit against the White House Monday demanding that it release information on healthcare meetings with lobbyists. The lawsuit, filed in federal district court, charges the Obama administration violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by not providing relevant information about closed-door meetings on healthcare policy. Klayman’s suit refers to reports of meetings between administration officials on the Health Reform de facto Advisory Committee and lobbyists representing the pharmaceutical industry (PhRMA), Planned Parenthood, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AARP and others. Klayman said the advisory committee...

In this country, even a global warming denialist with a carbon fetish and bad intentions has the right to see the inner workings of government. Or, at least, he should. When leaked e-mails recently exposed talk of manipulating scientific evidence on global warming, Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at The National Center for Atmospheric Research, argued that skeptics had cherry-picked and presented his comments out of context. To rectify this injustice, I sent Trenberth (and NCAR) a Freedom of Information Act request asking for his e-mail correspondences with other renowned climate scientists in an effort to help...

ClimateGate Research Unit Disables Its Website By Noel Sheppard Created 2009-12-14 10:03 The Climatic Research Unit at the heart of the ClimateGate [0] scandal has taken down most of the information previously available at its website. Prior to November's release of controversial e-mail messages and documents from Britain's University of East Anglea, there was a separate website for the institution's CRU that allowed readers to review articles and studies created by and for the Unit. Now, no matter what link one tries to access via a Google search, it directs you to a page that reads: "Due to the present...

Climategate may be just the tip of the global-warming iceberg according to the Washington, D.C.-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, which says the next weather-science scandal may erupt right here in the United States. For nearly three years CEI, a free-market, public-interest organization, has pursued a series of Freedom of Information Act Requests intended to force NASA's climate-science division to hand over e-mails it says could reflect the same sort of pro-warming bias seen in the recent e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia University. One reason NASA's unresponsiveness is drawing attention: For years, the CRU stonewalled a request...

Science: For two years, our space agency has refused Freedom of Information requests on why it has repeatedly corrected its climate figures. A leading researcher threatens to sue to find more inconvenient truths. What's become known as "Climate-Gate" may be about to explode on this side of the pond as well. Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has threatened a lawsuit against NASA if by year-end the agency doesn't honor his FOI requests for information on how and why its climate numbers have been consistently adjusted for errors. "I assume that what is there is highly...

The more we learn about the purloined e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, the more it resembles Watergate. As was the case in 1974, there will be no one particular spectacular revelation, but rather an unremitting and unrelenting daily drip-drip that ultimately brings down the house. The latest gem comes from none other than Rajendra Pauchari, the head of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who’s not trained in climatology. Without the IPCC, there would be no cap-and-tax legislation awaiting debate in the Senate; there would be no meeting in Copenhagen, where next month...

Not all of the climate change Hoaxers are members of the CSU in England, the other major "research arm" of the Church of Global Warming is the United States own Space agency, NASA. The man behind NASA's climate change efforts is James Hansen, who runs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He is also Al Gore's personal climate change guru. Hansen lives by one strong rule. "If God deals you bad numbers--fudge them." Remember when NASA announced October 2008 was the warmest in history and then, "OOPS NEVER MIND" someone figured out a mistake was made? It was James...

The fight over global warming science is about to cross the Atlantic with a U.S. researcher poised to sue NASA, demanding release of the same kind of climate data that has landed a leading British center in hot water over charges it skewed its data. Chris Horner... said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s. "I assume that what is there...

The fight over climate science is about to cross the Atlantic with a U.S. researcher poised to sue NASA, demanding the release of the same kind of information that landed a leading British center in hot water over charges that it skewed its data. Christopher C. Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data dating as far back as the...

SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOLDFACED RESPONSE FROM CRU DR. PHIL JONES!!! This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct. As far as I know, I am the person who made the original Freedom Of Information Act to CRU that started getting all this stirred up. I was trying to get access to the taxpayer funded raw data out of which they built the global...

"General reaction seems to be that the CRUgate emails are genuine, but with the caveat that there could be some less reliable stuff slipped in. In the circumstances, here are some summaries of the CRUgate files. I'll update these as and when I can. The refs are the email number. Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544) Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489) Tim...

On his first full day in office, January 21, 2009, President Obama issued a memorandum to the heads of all departments and agencies on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The President directed that FOIA "should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails." Moreover, the President instructed agencies that information should not be withheld merely because "public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears." Agencies were directed to respond to requests "promptly and in a spirit of cooperation." The President also...

After seven months of stonewalling their FOIA requests, Don Loos and the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation have been forced file a complaint with the U.S. District Court demanding the Department of Labor be compelled to give them the information they seek. So much for Obama's promise to run the the most open and transparent administration in history. On Obama's first day in office, the Department of Justice issued the following memorandum regarding FOIA requests: The President directed that FOIA “should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.” Moreover, the President instructed...

The anonymous tipster, whom many people initially assumed had "hacked" into the computers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (repeatedly called the "Hadley CRU," by mistake), might in fact be a CRU insider who released the files for his own reasons. The user, known only as "FOIA" (which now appears to be a reference to the British equivalent of the US Freedom of Information Act), left only one comment on The Air Vent to announce his release of his 61-MB ZIP archive. He has never been heard from since, nor has anyone stepped forward...

Back in April the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation filed a freedom of information act asking the Department of Labor to release: * Records from communications and recorded events where specified Obama appointees and Big Labor official were present * Lists of lawsuits involving the Department of Labor and Deborah Greenfield within the past eight years. * List of any gifts received by Solis in the past 5 years from Big Labor or its officials * Provide in detail (a) notes, (b) agreements, (c) communications, and (d) agendas related to the regulations related to the labor union and...

Due to the amount of traffic, the climateaudit.org site has been overwhelmed the last few days. CA founder Steve MacIntyre (The target of most of the controversy) has started a blog at the above address which can better handle the load. He has some interesting things to say about the CRU/Climategate revelations. One interesting tidbit- It has been determined that the infamous 62meg FOIA zipfile was created on 11/12/09. The latest FOIA denial letter sent to Steve was dated 11/13/09. Things that make you go "Hmmmm..." Credit to WUWT for making this info available!

JW Will File FOIA Lawsuit against Chicago Mayor Daley's Office to Obtain Records Related to Olympics Bid. Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it will file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's office to obtain records related to the Obama administration's failed bid to bring the Olympics to Chicago. President Obama tapped White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett to lead the Olympics effort, despite her personal and business ties to Chicago, which included a stint working for Mayor Daley. The Obama White House granted Jarrett...

Want to know what the Treasury Department is doing? Fork over $522,886 and they'll tell you... maybe. At least that is what Noah Wood has found with a Treasury Dept. reply to his FOIA request. In 1966 president Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a law that requires the federal government to provide information on its inner workings to citizens that request it. Of course, these FOIA requests aren't free. Oh, there is no fee for the request, mind you, but there are fees for the copies and the administrative time necessary to conduct...

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that the Obama administration argued in a recent court filing that the Privacy Act does not apply to the Executive Office of the President (EOP). This court filing came in a Judicial Watch lawsuit filed in 1996 against the Clinton White House related to a scandal known as "Filegate," where the Clinton White House obtained and maintained the private FBI files of hundreds of former Reagan and Bush officials [Alexander v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Civil Action No. 96-2123/97-1288 (RCL)]. In the Obama administration's "Renewed Motion...

When it came to divulging basic information, it was Richard Nixon's administration that became infamous for the phrase, and practice, of "modified, limited hangout." Now the Obama administration has abandoned all but the "limited" part. The candidate whose most identifiable promise was to provide open and transparent government instead is leading an administration rife with secrecy, stonewalling and prevarication.

In August 2009, CBS News made a simple request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for public documents, e-mails and other materials CDC used to communicate to states the decision to stop testing individual cases of Novel H1N1, or “swine flu.” When the public affairs folks at CDC refused to produce the documents and quit responding to my queries altogether, I filed a formal Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the materials. Members of the news media are entitled to expedited access, which I requested, since this was for a pending news report and on an issue of...

Here’s a real copy of an American citizen’s DHS Travel Record retrieved from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s Automated Targeting System (ATS). This was obtained through a FOIA/Privacy Act request and sent in by an anonymous reader (thanks!) The document reveals that the DHS is storing the reader’s: Credit card number and expiration (really)IP address used to make web travel reservations Hotel information and itineraryFull Name, birth date and passport numberFull airline itinerary, including flight numbers and seat numbersCruise ship itineraryPhone numbers, incl. business, home & cellEvery frequent flyer and hotel number associated with the subject, even ones not...

Regulators today won't define 'systemic risk,' unlike 25 years ago. With Congress back in session and the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers failure upon us, the Obama Administration is resuming its quest for greatly expanded authority to bail out American businesses. Under the Treasury reform blueprint, any financial company, whether a regulated bank or not, could be rescued or seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation if regulators believe it poses a systemic risk. If recent history is any guide, when the feds stage their next intervention, they will not define "systemic risk" and they will refuse to release the...

The Obama administration says it will release names of most visitors to the White House, starting at the end of this year. Information on visitors in the first eight months of his administration will remain secret — unless you know which names to ask for. The White House called the release of information "voluntary," continuing to argue the Bush administration's position that full disclosure is not required by the Freedom of Information Act. After being sued twice by a nonprofit organization seeking the records, the Obama administration said Friday it will post the visitor logs online. The release will be...

Link only

Here are the news stories, editorials, and videos that conservatives dugg yesterday, Tuesday, August 25, 2009. Please take a moment to digg these articles at Digg.com, then get back over here! What is Digg? And why should I care?

This is in relation to a lawsuit filed by Bloomberg LP against the Federal Reserve on November 7, 2008, in Southern District of New York (08-09595), in which Bloomberg sought material loan and collateral data in relation to emergency loans released by the Fed, and which were previously claimed to be non-FOIAble. This is a large blow against the Fed and specifically against organizations using FOIA loopholes from providing critical information, particularly in cases involving trillions of taxpayer dollars bailing out huge, systematically and politically embedded financial organizations (which lately is pretty much all of them).

A federal judge on Monday ruled against an effort by the U.S. Federal Reserve to block disclosure of companies that participated in and securities covered by a series of emergency funding programs as the global credit crisis began to intensify

Back in July, a software company named Smartronix [1] landed an $18 million contract to build a Web site where taxpayers could easily track billions in federal stimulus money. It was just another part of the Obama administration’s ongoing effort to bring transparency to stimulus spending, we were told. But it seems the drive for transparency doesn’t cover the contract itself.After weeks of prodding by ProPublica and other organizations, the General Services Administration released copies of the contract and related documents that are so heavily blacked out they are virtually worthless.Don’t believe us? Take a look. [2]ProPublica sought the contract...

Americans for Limited Government, which is the parent group of NetRight Nation, had it's Research Department do some digging on the right-wing threat assessment released from the Homeland Security Department. What they turned up was very interesting. The sources for the potential threats were actually from websites as well as some blogs. Essentially, this Homeland Security threat assessment was not based on any intelligence but on what someone found in doing some Google searches. You can see below that there are at least 20 websites that were used to compile this information. The report was completely based on someones search...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration is refusing to quickly release government records on its "cash-for-clunkers" rebate program that would substantiate—or undercut—White House claims of the program's success, even as the president presses the Senate for a quick vote for $2 billion to boost car sales. The Transportation Department said it will provide the data as soon as possible but did not specify a time frame or promise release of the data before the Senate votes whether to spend $2 billion more on the program.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Thursday denied a bid by Fox News Network LLC seeking details from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve about the central bank's loans to companies affected by the financial crisis. The owner of the Fox Business cable network made an initial request for documents in November last year under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) about the companies and funds they received between August 2007 and November 2008. Both parties had filed motions with U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan federal court to rule in their favor after Fox...

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reports on the loophole -- big enough to drive the White House visitor's log through -- in the Obama administration's "transparency" policy: As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to be a tool of the ACLU left as she is working hard to get rid of the McCain/Graham amendment to the war spending bill which will bar the release of photographs showing alleged U.S. abuses of terrorists. Pelosi told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz on Wednesday, “I don’t think Congress should make an exception to FOIA" (freedom of information act). Of course Pelosi is reversing her earlier stance in which she said she would “support” the Obama administration’s push to keep the photos secret. The amendment was unanimously passed by the Senate. But a House-Senate conference...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the office that has records about millions of possibly missing e-mails from the Bush White House does not have to make them public. The appeals court in Washington ruled that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. A group known as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had sued to get documents about the office's electronic record-keeping. In response to court orders in the case, the White House disclosed that it has located nearly 3,500 pages of documents about problems with...

On the morning of September 12, 2001, we were united in grief. People all over the world – especially Americans – were all New Yorkers. Today it appears we can never be accused of being elephants with long memories. The by-now infamous White House plane photo flap is a telling example. Have we become so desensitized that a scant eight years after 3,000 Americans were wantonly murdered we have become a nation of amnesiacs? Have we forgotten the horror of that day? Who delegated and approved the insensitive stunt of flying an aircraft low to the ground over Ground Zero,...

"So we're not gonna see the fruits of this cruel joke?" said Frank Antonelli, 39, one of the Wall Street traders spooked by last week's flyover.

The Department of Defense announced late Thursday that a 'substantial number of photos' depicting abuse of prisoners at prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan will be released. The Department of Defense announced late Thursday that a "substantial number of photos" depicting abuse of prisoners at prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan will be released. The photos are being released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2004.

Open-government advocates applaud but look for results On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama said the “Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.” Open-government groups cheered the Obama administration’s initial policy statements, but they’re waiting to see if change has really come to a government that grew opaque under the previous administration. Advocates chided the Bush administration for a lack of transparency and the Justice Department’s policy of generally defending agencies' decisions to withhold records requested by the public. The number of FOIA requests that were...

The White House has insisted that President Obama was reluctant to release documents detailing harsh CIA interrogation techniques that were kept secret by the Bush Administration. Four memos published last night showed that terror suspects had been subjected to tactics that included being slammed against walls while wearing a special plastic neck collar, kept awake for up to 11 straight days, simulation drowning known as "waterboarding" and being placed in a dark, cramped box. Senior officials explained that the President felt compelled to release the information because of a court case under the Freedom of Information act which ordered the...

Pedro Guzman has been an American citizen all his life. Yet in 2007, the 31-year-old Los Angeles native - in jail for a misdemeanor, mentally ill and never able to read or write - signed a waiver agreeing to leave the country without a hearing and was deported to Mexico as an illegal immigrant. For almost three months, Guzman slept in the streets, bathed in filthy rivers and ate out of trash cans while his mother scoured the city of Tijuana, its hospitals and morgues, clutching his photo in her hand. He was finally found trying to cross the border...

FBI InfraGard warns of a crescendo of public concern about Obama's eligibility April 05, 2009 11:14 Tasked by the FBI to provide "informational analysis" on conditions which could be construed as potentially harmful to civil order and national security, InfraGard, of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), issued an unclassified Protective Intelligence Communication report in March 2009 regarding the "crescendo" of public concern about Obama's presidential eligibility. Authored by Dr. Lyle J. Rapacki, Protective Intelligence Specialist and Agent, the report summarizes the substance of legal challenges to Obama on the question of his constitutional eligibility and concludes that if...

Last week, I argued that opposition to torture was the reason why State Department Counsel nominee Harold Koh and Office of Legal Counsel nominee Dawn Johnsen had drawn the ire of the Republican smear machine. On the surface, Republican opposition to Koh was based on a fictional anecdote about Koh supporting "Sharia" in the United States, and Johnsen's opinions on abortion. Scott Horton reports that torture indeed has something to do with Republican opposition to Koh and Johnsen, but it's far more disturbing than a difference of opinion on interrogation policy and human rights. It seems Republicans are holding Obama's...

Yesterday, we learned from the Chicago Tribune that Freddie Mac documents are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act because they contain or might compromise commercial information–that is, the proprietary insider information of a private company. Today, in the Washington Post, we learn that that private company was pressured to withhold negative information it was obligated to disclose under SEC rules. It seems that following government policy will adversely affect its bottom line, and the firm wanted to tell its remaining shareholders that. Federal officials who took over Freddie Mac stopped short of nationalizing the company, leaving it partly...

Bob Secter and Andrew Zajac of the Chicago Tribune report that, while researching what went at Freddie Mac during the period White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel served on the government sponsored enterprise’s board of directors, they were unable to get minutes of board meetings and other information: The Obama administration rejected a Tribune request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel’s time as a director. The documents, obtained by Falcon for his investigation, were “commercial information” exempt from disclosure, according to a lawyer for the Federal Housing Finance Agency....

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 Washington, DC: Obama "Birth Certificate" conference moves into high gear National conference to ask why Barack Obama is hiding his original typewritten birth certificate. Andy Martin: The American People want answers. Why is Obama concealing his original birth certificate? Why won't he make his college records available to researchers for scholarly review? The National Conference promises a "big surprise" on April 4th. [snip] 2. Hawai’i freedom of information materials We received a very generous grant to cover the costs of paying the State of Hawai’i for freedom-of-information materials. We hope to have some or all of...

There is nothing to see here. Please move along. The FBI has the worst record on Freedom of Information Act requests. They fail to deliver two out of three requests. We are never going to find out who shot JFK or where the UFO's are really from unless the FBI improves. I bet they won't release any information about Obama's birth certificate either. Anyone interested in taking that wager?

Last September, the Bush administration defended the unusual secrecy over an anti-counterfeiting treaty being negotiated by the U.S. government, which some liberal groups worry could criminalize some peer-to-peer file sharing that infringes copyrights. Now President Obama's White House has tightened the cloak of government secrecy still further, saying in a letter this week that a discussion draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and related materials are "classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958." The 1995 Executive Order 12958 allows material to be classified only if disclosure would do "damage to the national security and the...