Obama: Sunshine Superman or Lex Luthor of Open Gov't?
Teh bloggersphere is having good fun with President Barack Obama winning an award from a group promoting something called "Sunshine Week" for being so open and transparent when it comes to secrecy that he's like living in a glass house man. Except for all the stuff he's doing to renege on his promise to run the most open and transparent administration since Richard Nixon's. Says the AP:
People requested information 544,360 times last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act from the 35 largest agencies, up nearly 41,000 more than the previous year, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of new federal data. But the government responded to nearly 12,400 fewer requests.
The administration refused to release any sought-after materials in more than 1-in-3 information requests, including cases when it couldn't find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the request was determined to be improper under the law. It refused more often to quickly consider information requests about subjects described as urgent or especially newsworthy. And nearly half the agencies that AP examined took longer -- weeks more, in some cases -- to give out records last year than during the previous year….
Agencies refused more routinely last year to quickly consider information requests deemed especially urgent or newsworthy, agreeing to conduct a speedy review about 1-in-5 times they were asked. The State Department granted only 1 out of 98 such reviews; the Homeland Security Department granted 27 out of 1,476. The previous year the government overall granted more than 1-in-4 such speedy reviews.
And here's Time.com yapping with Rep. Dennis Kucinich about the White House war on leakers (and we're not talking Billy Carter-style leakers):
The prosecutions of those five leakers strike some, like Kucinich, as inconsistent for a President who signed a January 2009 memo to top government executives encouraging more transparency. "The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears," Obama wrote. "President Obama came to office promising a new transparency," Kucinich says. "We are getting the opposite."
The punchline to all this? Obama was all set to receive his award yesterday but bagged it "due to unspecified 'changes to the president's schedule.'"
Read more at The Daily Caller.
Take it away, Donovan!
[Warning: this video contains raw scenes of a hippie twirling umbrellas, holding kittens, and making eyeglasses by turning his hands upside down. Do not watch if you're a pregnant woman, as chromosonal damage is likely.]
