You Aren't My Sunshine

It's Sunshine Week, ladies and germs, which means time to assess how various guvmint agencies inside these United States are responding to Freedom of Information Act requests to peak underneath the State's hood. The Associated Press took an extended looksie at the "about 130 annual FOIA reports submitted to the Justice Department by the 15 executive departments between 1998 and 2004," and found that:

The percentage of requested information that is eventually released in full has been declining since 1998 at the Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Interior, State, Transportation and Treasury departments. The Justice Department began reducing the information it releases in full after the 2001 attacks.

At the CIA, just 12 percent of the FOIA requests processed were granted in total in 2004, down from 44 percent in 1998. The FBI gave people asking for records everything they asked for just 1 percent of the time in 2004, compared to 5 percent in 1998.