Free Republic

MADISON — What’s in a million names? Wisconsin and the world were supposed to find out Monday. Now, the Government Accountability Board, or GAB, which oversees state elections and campaigns, is reportedly holding off posting the reported 1 million signatures on petitions seeking to recall Gov. Scott Walker due to privacy concerns. GAB spokesman Reid Magney told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Monday evening the board was holding off on posting the names online after hearing concerns about a stalking victim and others who did not want their names released. Earlier in the day, Magney told Wisconsin Reporter that the...

He promised there wouldn’t be lobbyists. Not a one. But less than a week into Barack Obama’s presidency (a week!), the White House had hired at least a dozen of them. They granted exceptions for some, and for others they exploited loopholes in the administration’s own self-written, self-imposed rules. Anyone taken by surprise by the more recent White House scandals—Solyndra, Operation Fast and Furious, the downfall of Obama’s “Wall Street Guy” Jon Corzine—really shouldn’t have been surprised at all. That early ethical backpedalling was excellent, if not unfortunate, foreshadowing of what was to come. Over the last three years, Barack...

President Obama again left the White House without some of the reporters assigned to travel everywhere with him. The White House abruptly changed the call time for media to assemble to 8:15 AM this morning, and informed them of this change at 8:16 AM. As a result, Obama left the White House without a handful of the journalists assigned to write dispatches and reports to other reporters. The president traditionally travels with members of the White House press corps at all times.

Just like clockwork, the Obama administration never misses an opportunity to unload thousands of records it hopes no one will ever bother sifting through during the holidays. On Black Friday, the White House released more visitor log info — trumpeting disclosures it has fought tooth and nail. I’ve started looking through the data. And you can, too, right here:

The Justice Department withheld records about Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s role in healthcare reform, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said Tuesday. Smith pressed Attorney General Eric Holder to provide documents and witnesses about Kagan’s time as solicitor general and her role in preparing to defend President Obama’s healthcare reform law in court. Republicans have clamored for Kagan to recuse herself when the Supreme Court takes up a case challenging the law. Smith said in a letter to Holder that the Justice Department has refused to comply with his requests for documents and interviews about Kagan’s involvement. But...

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy unveiled a new application for mobile devices this week designed to make the congressional process more transparent to the average American. By downloading WhipCast to a handheld device or tablet, users can get the text of bills headed to the House floor and view the schedule of votes and debate. Evidently, people want this kind of detail: McCarthy’s office announced Wednesday that within the first day of its availability, 23,000 people had downloaded WhipCast....

Spot the irony in Vice President Biden’s schedule today, from the White House’s daily guidance: “At 1:00 PM, the Vice President will attend a meeting of the Government Accountability and Transparency Board in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. At 2:30 PM, the Vice President will meet with representatives of the National Sheriffs' Association in the Roosevelt Room. These meetings are closed press.”

A federal lawsuit appears to have pried from the Obama administration the names of the members of a presidentially-appointed panel that handles reports of illegal and improper spying by the intelligence community. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said it asked for records on the make-up of the Intelligence Oversight Board in February, after a reporter's query for the information was rejected. The online civil liberties group sued in September after getting no response to its request. EFF says it got an answer to its FOIA a week after filing suit. The names on the Intelligence Oversight Board are no surprise: the...

The President promised the country transparency and open government, so rather than just let FOIA requesters assume they are being lied to, the DOJ recently proposed coming clean and making such lies official policy. Freedom of information advocates could rejoice knowing that their government is transparent about not being transparent. Here's how it's supposed to work: The Freedom of Information Act allows access to records of all departments, agencies, and offices of the Executive Branch of the federal government, including the Executive Office of the President, unless those records fall under one of several exemptions. When asked to produce certain...

Accountability: After a long legal battle, a federal judge has ruled that White House visitor logs are public and can be released under the Freedom of Information Act. So much for the White House's vaunted claim to openness. It took the lawyers of Judicial Watch almost two years to pry open White House records on the matter of who visited the president and his advisers in the first seven months of Obama's administration. That information was solemnly promised to voters by candidate Obama in his 2008 campaign as a means of distinguishing his governing style from the supposedly ominous, secretive...

What is bothering is the fact that this story may go a bit deeper. Not only did Obama decide to ignore the Republicans who were entirely correct (that part is not new), but he also decided to ignore the experts in finances inside his own party and those nonpartisan ones hired to investigate Department of Energy spending. Despite criticism on both sides of the aisle, he still wastes more than half a billion dollars.  What would cause him to make such an expensive and ill-advised move? Was it an intoxicated Biden calling him a softie? The answer is that one...

The decadence of 'dark pool' markets Updated: 2011-11-07 07:49 By Daryl Guppy (China Daily) The collapse of MF Global Holdings again highlights the perils of derivative leverage in a loosely regulated market. It shows the need for genuine transparency in financial markets. The decadence of 'dark pool' markets MF Global had $1.4 billion in equity which it used to run up $44.4 billion in liabilities largely in trading European debt. The collapse of MF Global also dragged down its other trading operations, hitting individual investors and traders who found their accounts frozen and positions liquidated at unfavorable prices. MF Global...

When he took office, Barack Obama promised "an unprecedented level of openness in government." As a major part of that commitment, he pledged fidelity to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which he called "the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open government." It is hard to reconcile these lofty memos with the Justice Department's proposed rule instructing federal agencies to falsely deny the existence of records sought under FOIA. But at least the Obama administration is open about its desire to mislead us. Enacted in 1966, FOIA "encourages accountability through transparency," as Obama put...

The Justice Department of the Obama Administration, the self-proclaimed "most transparent administration ever Proposes Letting Government to Respond to Freedom of Information Requests Denying Existence of the Documents. A longtime internal policy that allowed Justice Department officials to deny the existence of sensitive information could become the law of the land -- in effect a license to lie -- if a newly proposed rule becomes federal regulation in the coming weeks. The proposed rule directs federal law enforcement agencies, after personnel have determined that documents are too delicate to be released, to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests "as...

Judicial Watch Obtains Documents Detailing Secret Department of Justice Transparency Workshop Only in Washington would political appointees think it appropriate to keep secret a government workshop on transparency. And only in Washington would a politician promote his efforts on transparency while simultaneously taking steps to keep the American people in the dark about their government. » If you like this article, please subscribe to our daily newsletter DOJBut that’s exactly what the Obama White House did on December 7, 2009. And Judicial Watch now has the evidence to prove it. On Monday, we released documents detailing the Obama White House...

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The Occupy LA movement grew by the thousands Wednesday as unionized workers, caregivers and their patients joined the call for an end to corporate greed and Congress to put Americans back to work. The demonstrators held large signs, chanted loudly and blew whistles as they marched through the streets of downtown Los Angeles to the steps of City Hall. Organized by the Service Employees International Union, the demonstration was in support of President Barack Obama's American Jobs Act....

Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by government watchdog group Judicial Watch suggest that the White House had direct involvement in shutting a transparency hearing to the press. “Please don’t have them reach out to any reporters before I clear [with White House] press,” wrote White House Deputy Associate Counsel Blake Roberts to the Office of Information Policy (OIP), about what should have been a fairly noncontroversial training session. The workshop was conducted by the OIP for Department of Justice employees on FOIA compliance procedures.

Act (FOIA) request by government watchdog group Judicial Watch suggest that the White House had direct involvement in shutting a transparency hearing to the press. “Please don’t have them reach out to any reporters before I clear [with White House] press,” wrote White House Deputy Associate Counsel Blake Roberts to the Office of Information Policy (OIP), about what should have been a fairly noncontroversial training session. The workshop was conducted by the OIP for Department of Justice employees on FOIA compliance procedures. Another email, from DOJ Press Release Deputy Director Gina Talamona to the OIP and the attorney general’s office,...

We unmasked one shameless fraud earlier, so why not keep it rolling by highlighting another?  Let's revisit the "change" millions of Americans were hoodwinked by in 2008 and early 2009: Obama: Transparency Will Be Touchstone "The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable.  The way to make government accountable is to make it transparent, so the American people can know exactly what decisions are being made, how they're being well made, and whether their interests are being well served...For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city.  The old rules said that if...

Newt Gingrich is asked about the Occupy Wall Street movement at the Bloomberg debate in New Hampshire: New Gingrich: "If they want to change things, the first thing to do is fire Bernanke, who is a disaster as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The second person to fire is Geithner. The fact is, in both the Bush and the Obama administrations the fix has been in. And I think it's perfectly reasonable to be angry. But let's be clear about who put the fix in. The fix was put in by the federal government. If you want to put people...

Outside the U.S. government, President Obama's order to kill American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without due process has proved controversial, with experts in law and war reaching different conclusions. Inside the Obama Administration, however, disagreement was apparently absent, or so say anonymous sources quoted by the Washington Post. "The Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting of Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday, according to administration officials," the newspaper reported. "The document was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved...

Dear Friend, Thank you for your message. On behalf of President Obama, we appreciate hearing from you. The President has promised the most transparent administration in history, and we are committed to listening to and responding to you. In order to better handle the millions of electronic messages we are receiving and respond more quickly, we have implemented a new contact form on our website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ Please note that this web form has replaced comments@whitehouse.gov. That email address is no longer monitored, so we encourage you to resubmit your message through the link above. Thank you for using the web...

On Jan. 13, 2009, Michael Allison brought a digital recorder to the Crawford County Courthouse in Robinson, Ill., where he was contesting a citation, because he had been told there would be no official transcript of the proceedings. He was immediately confronted by Judge Kimbara Harrell, who accused him of violating her privacy and charged him with eavesdropping, a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Because Allison had recorded conversations about his legal situation with police and other local officials, he soon faced four more eavesdropping charges, raising his possible sentence to 75 years. The case against...

While the healthcare industry promotes enhanced transparency, the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) is taking a step in the other direction, shutting down the once-public National Practitioner Data Bank, reports The Kansas City Star. As a result, the public can no longer access information on malpractice and disciplinary actions against thousands of doctors. "We have a responsibility to make sure under federal law that it remains confidential," said Martin Kramer, spokesman for the HHS's Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees the Data Bank. The HHS defends the shutdown, noting that the names of doctors were getting leaked...

OTTAWA - When it comes to the battle of ideas, CBC has lost the fight to keep their secrets under wraps. The public just doesn't back them. I've been writing about the state broadcaster and their refusal to release documents to the public for some time now. In that time, we've exposed that CBC has refused to tell the public how much absenteeism costs them each year, how much they spend to maintain the taxpayer-funded buildings out of which they operate, and even how much their executives have spent on travel and hospitality. Now, a poll from Abacus Data shows...

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee kicked up a political storm this week. Tuesday Ros-Lehtinen introduced the United Nations Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act. If passed into law it would place stringent restrictions on US funding of the UN's budget. SNIP If Ros-Lehtinen's act is passed into law, the UN will have two years to enact budgetary reforms that would render a minimum of 80 percent of its budget financing voluntary. If the UN does not make the required reforms, the US government will be enjoined to withhold fifty percent of its non-voluntary UN budget...

House investigators said they have uncovered evidence that White House officials became personally involved in an Energy Department review of a hot-button $535 million loan guarantee to the now-failed California solar company Solyndra. The allegation surfaced in a letter House Energy Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) sent to the White House Thursday night, saying he planned to accelerate efforts to understand an investment deal that may have left taxpayers out half a billion dollars. "We have learned from our investigation that White House officials monitored Solyndra's application and communicated with [Department of Energy] and Office of Management and Budget officials...

On Thursday the House Energy and Commerce Committee ramped up its ongoing investigation of the federal government’s $535 million loan to Solyndra, a solar energy company that recently announced it will file for bankruptcy. In a letter to the White House, committee Chairman Fred Upton and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns requested a scheduled briefing on the matter by no later than September 12 and asked for all documents related to the loan guarantee between Solyndra and the White House. In 2009, Solyndra was the recipient of a half-billion-dollar loan through the Department of Energy, funded by stimulus...

The Obama administration bypassed procedural steps meant to protect taxpayers as it hurried to approve an energy loan guarantee to a politically-connected California solar power startup, ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News have learned …The Energy Department in March 2009 announced its intention to award Solyndra Inc. a $535 million loan guarantee before receiving final copies of outside reviews typically used to vet such deals. ...The loan guarantee, the administration's first for a clean energy project, benefited a company whose prime financial backers include Oklahoma oil billionaire George Kaiser, a "bundler" of campaign donations. Kaiser raised...

I mentioned on Twitter yesterday that I was astonished with the speed and completeness of response to a pair of requests I filed recently under the Texas Public Information Act, which has been a pleasant surprise in covering Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The tweet drew a quick response from several reporters and activists in Texas, who noted that the speed may have something to do with what Perry's government destroys: every email more than a week old. The office says they print out and save emails that they're required to preserve, but there's no way to check.

When then-Gov. George W. Bush ran for president in 2000, his office released a treasure trove of information relating to his years as Texas' chief executive. Some 3,125 pages detailing Bush's appointments during 1995-1998 allowed news organizations to remark on the exact number of lobbyists and campaign donors with whom he met. The records showed which state lawmakers Bush conferred with - and on what subject - and detailed how much time he spent reviewing capital punishment cases prior to executions. The records showed when he arrived at the office, when he took time off for the gym and when...

Is Michelle Obama a modern-day Mary Lincoln? Anonymous (so far) White House sources are saying it's a fair comparison as the First Lady does to President Obama what Mary Todd did to her husband by spending taxpayer money on luxuries like it was drying up forever. Which is possible... In the last year alone Michelle Obama is accused of spending more than $10 million on vacations and expensive accommodations, all on the public dime. The report, broken by the National Enquirer, is light on the sources, but heavy on the details. The picture painted seems to go way beyond what...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge is ruling against the Secret Service, saying records of visitors to the White House are subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. The Secret Service had argued that the visitors' logs were presidential records exempt from public disclosure. But U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell on Wednesday disagreed. Howell sided with government watchdog group Judicial Watch, which had sued for records from the first eight months of the Obama administration. Howell said the Secret Service must disclose the records, except individual entries that fall under exemptions like for national security. In September 2009, President Barack...

In 2009, the Michigan Department of State Police wanted to charge the Mackinac Center for Public Policy $6.8 million for a Freedom of Information Act regarding the state’s handling of federal homeland security grant money from 2002 to 2009. But not all eyebrow raising costs for FOIA replies come with such a hefty price tag. Consider the County of Muskegon’s reply to the Mackinac Center’s FOIA request for the CEO’s salary and benefits for the past two years at the Muskegon Area Transit System. The County of Muskegon said they no longer had the 2009-10 information and the 2010-11 information...

The chief of the secretive US special operations command has lobbied against the release of names of American commandos killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday. Thirty US troops were killed on Friday when their Chinook helicopter was shot out of the sky in a remote Afghan valley, but in a break with Pentagon practice, the identities of the dead service members have not been released. The dead included 22 members of the elite Navy SEAL commandos and three Air Force special operators, and senior officers overseeing the special forces are reluctant to publicly identify the slain...

The California Assembly says the public has no right to see lawmakers' current office budgets and spending projections, documents that could show whether punishment is doled out for key votes.

"Obvious what is being done in the House is not compromise. It is being jammed through with all kinds of non-transparent dealings, people shuffling in and out of the Republican Leader's office. We're recognizing that the only compromise that there is, is mine," Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said. VIDEO OF THE CLOWN'S REMARKS AT THE LINK.

A few minutes ago, NAACP officials asked me to leave the NAACP’s seminar on “civic engagement.” The seminar was listed in the official program, among several concurrent workshops. However, I was soon informed that it was “not open to media.” I complied by leaving, though not before collecting my belongings, including the NAACP’s manual for voter registration, canvassing, and get-out-the vote efforts in 2012. The few seconds of video below are all that I managed to obtain before being asked to leave.

HONG KONG (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in Hong Kong to extol the virtues of American financial policies and values despite the currently poor state of the economy and the stalemate over the national debt. In a speech Monday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce here, Clinton will appeal to China and other Asian nations not to lose faith in the American model. *** Clinton's comments come as world financial markets warily watch developments in Washington, where the White House and Congress remain deadlocked in a fiercely partisan debate over increasing the debt ceiling ahead...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal magistrate refused Wednesday to order the White House to provide BP PLC with emails by a former top adviser to President Barack Obama about the administration's response to last summer's massive Gulf oil spill. A lawyer for the oil giant had argued that emails by Carol Browner, Obama's former adviser on energy and climate matters, and three other officials in the Executive Office of the President could shed light on the White House's role in estimating the rate of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the company's blown-out well. But U.S. Magistrate...

The Democratic National Committee jabbed at the Republican National Committee Monday for calling on the Justice Department to investigate whether President Obama had used the White House to record a political advertisement. The RNC requested an investigation after reports surfaced that Obama may have used government property to film a political advertisement. The spot is an indirect request by the president for people to contribute $5 or more for the chance of “Dinner with Barack and Joe [Biden].” “This is a disgraceful, desperate and politically-motivated attempt at getting headlines by a Republican Party awash in special interest cash which is...

A watchdog group continues to call on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release documents from a four-year investigation of Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.). Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) previously filed Freedom of Information Act requests and administrative appeals seeking information about why the DOJ did not bring charges against Mollohan.In 2006, the DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched an investigation on Mollohan and his connections to five non-profit organizations he created that were managed by close friends and real estate partners.Mollohan allegedly directed more than $250 million in earmarks to the non-profits...

The Department of Justice is trying to protect its political appointees from becoming embroiled in the broadening Fast and Furious gun-tracing scandal by refusing to release an internal "smoking gun" report that acknowledges the role of top officials in the program that allowed guns to flow illegally into Mexico, according to the head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Kenneth Melson, the ATF acting director, earlier this month also told congressional investigators examining the role of top officials in the ill-fated program that affidavits in support of wiretaps used in the operation are inconsistent with what...

<p>Yesterday, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) took to the Senate floor to fight against secrecy in budget talks and out of control spending. Transparency may be dead in debt limit talks, but if heroes like Senator Johnson pledge to use the two most important words in the Senate dictionary–“I Object”–to shut down the Senate, they can force transparency for the American people.</p>

The Obama administration on Tuesday made its most forceful push yet this Congress to reform the country’s immigration laws. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Defense Under Secretary Clifford Stanley laid out a laundry list of national security-related financial and educational reasons why Congress needs to push forward with the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. Napolitano said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not have the resources necessary to remove the estimated 11 million people who are in the country illegally. The DREAM Act, she said, would grant conditional citizenship to...

Through a nonprofit, private donors are expected to cover the $3,000-a-month rent, along with utilities and other expenses, on Gov. Jerry Brown's loft in Sacramento. Brown's office referred questions to George Kieffer, who is president of the nonprofit, known as the Governor's Residence Foundation. Kieffer said his group would release the names of donors and the amount they have contributed in January 2012. He said the group was raising money to pay Brown's rent, as well as his utility bills. "We're budgeting some additional money assuming that, from time to time, there'll be entertainment

Kenneth Melson of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms faces controversy over the agency's surveillance program that allowed U.S. guns into Mexico. He is said to be eager to testify to Congress. The acting director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is strongly resisting pressure to step down because of growing controversy over the agency's surveillance program that allowed U.S. guns to flow unchecked into Mexico, according to several federal sources in Washington.

Through a nonprofit, private donors are expected to cover the $3,000-a-month rent, along with utilities and other expenses, on Gov. Jerry Brown's loft in Sacramento. Reporting from Sacramento -- Gov. Jerry Brown will look to a group of private donors — presently refusing to reveal their identities — to pay his rent at the luxury loft in downtown Sacramento where Brown and his wife live while in town. Donors are contributing to a nonprofit formed specifically to cover the costs of Brown's $3,000-a-month, 1,450-square-foot apartment. In the past, the practice of having private donors pay for the governor's residence has...

Citizens will lose a powerful means of controlling their government if the Michigan Supreme Court allows a lower court decision to stand that limits access to public records. The flawed decision would conceal government employees’ use of public resources for private gain, partisan politics or even illegal activity. The Freedom of Information Act allows citizens to view what public servants produce with public dollars. Using FOIA, citizens can access almost all government records, including electronic documents such as emails. Most of the time, FOIA is a quiet workhorse of public policy research and journalism. But sometimes it’s at the heart...

While America as a whole slides toward unemployment and poverty, certain well-connected people are doing very nicely indeed. Consider Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul. Kevin Bogardus of The Hill reports:  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saw her net worth rise 62 percent last year, cementing her status as one of the wealthiest members of Congress.Pelosi was worth at least $35.2 million in the 2010 calendar year, according to a financial disclosure report released Wednesday. She reported a minimum of $43.4 million in assets and about $8.2 in liabilities.For 2009, Pelosi reported a minimum net worth...