“Justice Dept. proposes lying, hiding existence of records under new FOIA rule”:
A proposed revision to Freedom of Information Act rules would allow federal agencies to lie to citizens and reporters seeking certain records, telling them the records don’t exist.
The Justice Department has proposed the change as part of a large revision of FOIA rules for federal agencies. Specifically, the rule would direct government agencies who are denying a request under an established FOIA exemption to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist,” rather than citing the relevant exemption.
The proposed rule has alarmed government transparency advocates across the political spectrum, who’ve called it “Orwellian” and say it will “twist” public access to government.
In a public comment regarding the rule change, the ACLU, along with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and OpenTheGovernment.org, said the move “will dramatically undermine government integrity by allowing a law designed to provide public access to government information to be twisted to permit federal law enforcement agencies to actively lie to the American people.”
[…]
The news is “not surprising, coming from the Obama administration,” said Christopher J. Farrell, director of investigations and research at Judicial Watch.
“The Obama administration is already doing it right now by actively misleading the public concerning White House visitor logs,” Farrell said. “Every day, the Obama administration misrepresents and conceals the true, complete record of who is going in and out of the White House — all the while proclaiming themselves champions of transparency. It’s truly Orwellian. The proposed rule change should be rejected.”
[…]
Under current FOIA practice, the government may withhold information and issue a denial saying it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records. Such a denial is known as a “Glomar response” — named after the legal battle between the Los Angeles Times and the CIA in the 1970s over records concerning the CIA’s attempts to salvage a sunken Soviet submarine.
Upon taking office, President Obama released a memorandum declaring his administration was “committed to operating with an unprecedented level of openness. Specifically, he pledged to bolster the strength of the FOIA act, calling it “the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open government.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Or could they, but we’re just not allowed to know that they were…?
I SMELL FREEMASONS!
Let’s be honest: this is the first fully-committed postmodern Administration; any “promises” or “pledges” it made were merely for immediate rhetorical effect and can either be glossed over, disavowed, or reneged upon as a function of changing contexts, or as a performative of “reality’s” ever-shifting ontological tether, captured as it necessarily is by an unreliable second-order symbolic system dependent in large part on convention.
Really. Check the rule book.
“Openess” is a sliding scale. Only the rubes thought Obama meant “more open than ever before” instead of “less open than ever before” by “unprecedented.”
It was a kindness of Ol’ Bill Clinton to so prominently alert the country to the is-is distincton. Maybe the most forthright thing the man ever did.
Now, Obama won’t even allow the lapdog media to fellate him as he fundraisies in California. Can you even imagine the media outrage if Bush had shut out local reporters from his campaign events?
Even the Democrat media consultants quoted in the piece are agog that Obama is doing this.
“Obama freezes local reporters out of S.F. event” – SF Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/25/MNIE1LLMJJ.DTL&tsp=1
Transparent? Not so much.
Arrogant SOB? Got that covered…..
If by “transparent” we mean that everyone can see right through them no matter what they do or say, well…
But I don’t think that’s how they want us to mean it.
Smells like Muslims to me. Don’t they have a thing where they aren’t supposed to lie except to infidels?
Just what I heard, it’s not like I went to school in Indonesia or anything…
And we must presume, if not passed, then not enacted in practice or effect.
Ah, he’s just embracing his inner muslim. Taqqiya, anyone?
Sorry, I see Lee already covered that one.
So if I say “Inigo Montoya” everyone here will both understand the reference and wonder why I would waste our collective time in doing so – right? I mean, I am on both counts and I wrote the thing.
Related?
Nothing original here. George Stephanapolous famously defended Bill Clinton by saying he kept the promises he meant to keep.
Biden ought to simply put in for a disability exception: he’s a moral imbecile, incapable of ordinary converse with ordinary people. There’s bound to be a significant constituency there too, so he can become a spokesguy and make a little scratch.
This should be great for my pitchfork business.
EU taking “transparency” to a new level of opaque.
Inconceivable!