popeye1250
Posts: 18104
Joined: 1/27/2006 From: New Hampshire Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Yachtie From http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public. Really Obama? Really? President Obama and his successors in the Oval Office are not obligated to make public the names of individuals visiting the White House, according to a decision of the federal Circuit Court for the District of Columbia made public Friday. The case was brought by Judicial Watch, the government watchdog nonprofit that has been fighting a long legal battle seeking to force release of the White House visitor logs as public records under the Freedom of Information Act. But in a decision that is drawing intense criticism from across the ideological spectrum, the circuit court said the president has a "constitutional perogative" not to tell the American people who he or his staff meets with in the White House. Sign Up for the Watchdog newsletter! The court said the president has such a prerogative because he is not covered by the FOIA and because of "special policy considerations" that allow exemption of visitor logs from classification as agency records subject to release under the public records law. People were hoping for better than Bush. We didn't get it. Not by a long shot. Matter of fact, appears the Nobel Peace Prize is looking to be the War Prize. Not surprising, when transparency is spelled secrecy. Ok then, so we can all agree that we *do not* have an unprecedented level of openess in government?
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"But Your Honor, this is not a Jury of my Peers, these people are all decent, honest, law-abiding citizens!"
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