Free Republic

MADISON — As National Sunshine Week gets underway, darkness continues to shroud Wisconsin state government. In his first year-plus in office, Gov. Tony Evers and his administration have closed a lot of doors to open government, evidenced by the transparency and First Amendment lawsuits pending.In December, Fox6 News, represented by the Wisconsin Transparency Project, filed a lawsuit against the governor.You’ll recall that reporter Amanda St. Hilaire had filed a basic request seeking all emails between the governor and his chief of staff over a four-week period. Evers’ legal counsel rejected the request, insisting it was too broad and burdensome.St. Hilaire pared...

A conservative legal group is accusing state Democratic officials of conspiring to flout public records laws in order to keep secret details of a campaign to bring racketeering charges against climate policy dissenters. Democratic attorneys general led by New York’s Eric Schneiderman are seeking to block efforts to obtain documents about their efforts by invoking an overbroad claim to secrecy in ongoing legal proceedings, according to the Energy and Environment (E&E) Legal Institute. “These activist AGs are trying to write themselves out from freedom of information laws their legislatures have written them into,” E&E senior legal fellow Chris Horner said...

If you've seen news reports about suspicious state contracts or chemical waste pits or officials' text messages in the Waco biker shootout, you may notice a recurring theme: government records obtained through the Texas Public Information Act. Fortunately, our state’s public information law, created in the early 1970s, presumes government records are open unless a specific exemption in the law keeps the documents off-limits. The public has a right to know. That means all citizens - not only journalists - can access government records. "It's very easy," said award-winning reporter Melissa Correa of KRGV-TV in Weslaco, recently explaining her use...

A group of 29 European journalists have filed complaints with the EU's Court of Justice, demanding access to documents that will show how members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been spending their allowances. The reporters filed freedom of information (FOI) requests with the European Parliament, asking for copies of documents that show details for the MEPs' travel expenses, accommodation expenses, office expenses, and assistants expenses for the past four years. ...

Nobody should be more grateful than Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature for the recent holiday weekend, and not just because they needed a break from the stress of budget-writing—though it’s apparent they did. Things closing last Friday for the Saturday holiday gave the other 5.7 million Wisconsinites a chance to miss the Joint Finance Committee’s extraordinarily ill-advised effort to exempt most communications involving state lawmakers from coverage by open records law. This ham-fisted insult to government transparency was walked back before the weekend was half over, in hopes of minimizing the damage. Which is a good thing, but it leaves...

Gov. Scott Walker will have to act in near-record time to sign the state budget before his presidential campaign announcement on Monday, but his Democratic predecessor signed budgets on the same timeline. Walker's office has not released a timeline for when or where he will sign the state budget and unveil his partial vetoes to it, but the Republican governor has repeatedly said that he wants the budget finished before he hits the White House campaign trail. The state Senate passed Walker's two-year $72.7 billion state budget just before midnight on Tuesday, and the Assembly is expected to send it...

The Associated Press’ Washington bureau chief is the latest journalist to criticize the Obama administration for failing to live up to its promise of transparency. “Bush was not fantastic,” Sally Buzbee recently told a meeting of journalists. “The [Obama] administration is significantly worse than previous administrations.” Buzbee detailed eight ways the Obama administration is restricting access to information at a joint meeting of the American Society of News Editors, the Associated Press Media Editors and the Associated Press Photo Managers. Her comments were highlighted on the AP’s Definitive Source blog. 1) Journalists Can’t See the Fight Against Islamic Militants: Buzbee...

Federal safety regulators on Thursday proposed major changes in workplace reporting rules that would require large companies to file injury and illness reports electronically so they can be posted online and made available to the public. Safety advocates said the proposal by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would put more pressure on companies to comply with safety rules and make it easier for employees and the public to identify businesses with poor safety records. But business groups contend making the information public could be misleading and intrusive.OSHA head David Michaels said the changes would provide better access to data...

The Danish presidency has abandoned attempts to agree to new rules on access to EU documents. It took the decision on Tuesday (12 June) after EU countries and the European Commission last week rejected its latest draft of the law. It still wants MEPs to back a commission proposal to extend existing rules on freedom of information to all EU institutions—including its 31 agencies—however. The existing rules go back to 2001. Pro-transparency advocates say they allow too much secrecy. EU officials say they waste time by ambiguity on what is open or not. A big sticking point in the draft...

"All governments lie," the late muckraker I.F. "Izzy" Stone used to preach. Let's add this: They also deny. Denial of access is a government lie in and of itself -- especially when a bureaucrat tells the public it has no right to view the writings of top officials, particularly when those officials are in trouble. A pair of recent controversies shows how quickly governments become recalcitrant for fear of embarrassment, denying access to information that may further public understanding and full accountability. In one, lawyers have denied access to records involving a California power couple, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer and...

Less than one day into his term as president, and Barack Obama is already illustrating why those who did not vote for him voted as they did. Obama is an extreme hypocrite. Notice, for example, this summary from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090121/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_executive_pay concerning his desire to loosen up restrictions on releasing information under the Freedom of Information Act. Obama stated that "Just because a government agency has the legal power to keep information private does not mean that it should" and "For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city." The order that he issued Wednesday is an attempt...

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...

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...

ClimateGate: Britain's Climate Research Unit now says it will release all its data. Does that include the data that have been shredded, deleted and denied publication? In a statement released Saturday by the University of East Anglia, where the CRU is located, it was announced that all unit data, including data that had been denied climate skeptics, would soon be released to prove this is much ado about nothing. Unimpressed by the news is David Holland of Northampton, a grandfather with a background in electrical engineering, who is seeking prosecution of the CRU scientists involved in suppressing and even destroying...

A federal judge today sided with the Bush administration in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit related to missing White House e-mails. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who is probably most familiar to Ars readers for her role in the Microsoft antitrust case, held that the White House's Office of Administration was not a federal agency as that term is defined by the FOIA and was therefore not obligated to respond to FOIA requests. The ruling represents a setback for the plaintiff, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which was also behind the White House e-mail lawsuit we covered...

Judge rules for White House in e-mail controversy By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago A federal judge ruled Monday that a White House office that has records about millions of possibly missing e-mails does not have to make them public. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly says the Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, enabling the White House to maintain the secrecy of a lengthy internal paper trail about its problem-plagued e-mail system. The decision came in a lawsuit filed against the administration by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a...

Open the First Lady files template_bas template_bas Hillary Clinton should help the National Archives put release of her White House papers on a fast track. August 29, 2007 In asking a federal court to force the National Archives to release papers from Hillary Rodham Clinton's time as first lady, the public interest group Judicial Watch has opened itself to the charge that it's on a fishing expedition. Maybe so, but the group is fishing with a license -- the Freedom of Information Act. That law allows citizens to inspect public documents after deletions are made for privilege or national security....

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton cites her experience as a compelling reason voters should make her president, but nearly 2 million pages of documents covering her White House years are locked up in a building here, obscuring a large swath of her record as first lady.

Irvine, CA (LifeNews.com) -- After the California Supreme Court ruled that the state's stem cell research firm is following all of the state's public accountability laws, watchdog groups say the problems are continuing. Now they are having a hard time getting the National Academy of Sciences to open their meetings to the public. The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights says NAS recently barred the public from a meeting of representatives of state public stem cell research programs at the National Academies' Beckman Center in Irvine.John Simpson, a spokesman for the consumer group, arrived late in the day intending to...

Dozens of reporters, historians and others have filed requests for documents from the archive of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock. But 16 months after the library began accepting applications for material, no major requests for sensitive documents related to Hillary Clinton’s years as first lady have been honored, a Newsday investigation found. "I haven’t received any documents or even a note indicating that they’re searching the records,” said Jeff Gerth, a former New York Times reporter who filed a request for documents in January 2006 for a Clinton biography. With Hillary Clinton seeking the Democratic nomination...