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The Obama administration says it will release names of most visitors to the White House, starting at the end of this year. Information on visitors in the first eight months of his administration will remain secret — unless you know which names to ask for. The White House called the release of information "voluntary," continuing to argue the Bush administration's position that full disclosure is not required by the Freedom of Information Act. After being sued twice by a nonprofit organization seeking the records, the Obama administration said Friday it will post the visitor logs online. The release will be...

Czar is perhaps the perfect title for Carol Browner, the person President Obama chose to rule over his climate policy. The woman will run her kingdom like an autocrat, she will take no prisoners and she will hide all the "bodies" For Example: Until early January Carol M. Browner, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change. Then Mrs. Browner's name and biography had been removed from Socialist International's Web page, though a photo...

December 12, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Down on BrownerRegression we can’t afford. By Michelle Malkin Yet another Clintonite has been wheeled out of the political morgue to serve in the Obama administration. Carol Browner, a neon-green radical who headed the Environmental Protection Agency from 1993-2000, is widely rumored to be the president-elect’s choice for “energy czar.� But an ethical cloud still hangs over Browner’s EPA legacy. It doesn’t take a team of Ivy League lawyers to figure out that this is one more headache the Hope and Change crew doesn’t need. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, let...

Yet another Clintonite has been wheeled out of the political morgue to serve in the Obama administration. Carol Browner, a neon-green radical who headed the Environmental Protection Agency from 1993-2000, is widely rumored to be the president-elect's choice for "energy czar." But an ethical cloud still hangs over Browner's EPA legacy. It doesn't take a team of Ivy League lawyers to figure out that this is one more headache the Hope and Change crew doesn't need. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, let me dust off the cobwebs and help out all the smarty-pants vetters on the Obama...

DICK Cheney is getting vindication from an unlikely source -- the very Obama administration he's bedeviling in all his TV interviews. The former vice president has dared to defend the Bush administration from charges that it ran a torturing, Constitution-shredding criminal enterprise for years under the guise of the "War on Terror." He's been duly subjected to the Two Minutes Hate -- on an endless loop -- from all the people who want him to slink to an undisclosed location never to emerge again. Cheney's defense is so notable because he's so lonely. As the Bush administration is accused of...

During his presidential campaign, a solemn pledge by Barack Obama that almost made me vote for him (but I'm pro-life, and he's a pro-choice extremist) was that his administration would be the most open and transparent in our history, in contrast to the deeply, darkly secret George W. Bush-Dick Cheney administration. But, as with some of his other broken promises to restore the Constitution, I increasingly have less hope for a reason to believe in the Obama presidency. For a glaring example, with regard to the pervasive secrecy of his predecessors, President Obama has stunningly not only continued to invoke...

Our Liar-in-Chief is at it again. Obama Administration Maintains Bush Legal Argument for Terrorist Surveillance Secrecy President Obama's most liberal supporters are dismayed and disgusted ... because this administration is invoking the "state secrets" privilege. FOXNews.com Monday, April 13, 2009 President Obama's most liberal supporters say they are dismayed and disgusted because this administration is invoking the "state secrets" privilege -- just as former President George W. Bush did -- to shield eavesdropping programs from public exposure. "I wasn't happy when George Bush asserted that he could do these things and I'm not happy that President Obama is now agreeing...

It’s not just Paul Krugman anymore. A growing chorus on the legal left is cooling toward President Barack Obama as a result of recent actions by the Justice Department vigorously defending the Bush administration in what it termed the war on terror. “Obama Position on Illegal Spying: Worse Than Bush,” a large graphic declared over the weekend on the home page of a respected group advocating freedom on the Internet, Electronic Frontier Foundation. Obama has been pilloried by a liberal TV icon who was one of President George W. Bush’s most vociferous critics, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. “During his run for...

<p>WASHINGTON - At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute at least $1 million each to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups, to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up during the last three decades.</p>

Six weeks after President Barack Obama appointed a blue-ribbon panel to help him dig America out of its economic crisis, the board has yet to hold an official public meeting. The White House initially said that the 16-member Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, would meet “every few weeks.” Last month, a spokesperson told POLITICO the group would meet monthly. And more recently, the White House said the high-powered board, set up to address what Obama has called the worst economic emergency since the Great Depression, would gather only about four times a...

ZURICH – The new chief executive of UBS AG says Switzerland should consider changing its banking secrecy laws so they no longer protect suspected tax evaders, according to an interview published Saturday. Oswald Gruebel told twice-weekly newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft that Switzerland's banking secrecy laws need to be changed in order to ease the political pressure other countries are putting on the small Alpine nation. Germany, Britain and the United States have demanded that Switzerland open itself up to foreign tax investigations. UBS is currently the subject of a major U.S. probe into whether it conspired to defraud the U.S....

Obama's administration is requiring defense officials to sign a pledge that they will not release information about the 2010 budget to anyone outside the government. The article cannot be linked directly because of a copyright complaint. Here is the link: http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3957786

FED seeks to remove anonimity of Swiss Bank Accounts In the hush-hush world of Swiss banking, the unthinkable is happening: Secrets are spilling into the open. UBS, the largest Swiss bank, agreed Wednesday to divulge the names of well-heeled Americans whom the authorities suspect of using offshore accounts at the bank to evade taxes. The bank admitted having conspired to defraud the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and agreed to pay $780 million to settle a sweeping U.S. investigation into its activities. It is unclear how many of its clients' names UBS will divulge. U.S. prosecutors have been examining about 19,000...

Despite all claims to the contrary, President Obama has not been very vigilant about pursuing that idea of "transparency" he ballyhooed during the recent campaign. Politico reported on a host of documents, proclamations and executive orders that Obama has made in the last month and none of them were on-line. In fact, many were not even released at all to the press by the White House. So, where is the drumbeat of outrage about the "secret presidency" we heard for the last 6 or so years? Remember all the mavens of the Old Media establishment that kept claiming that Bush...

Reporting from Sacramento -- Under the gilded dome of the state Capitol, the Cone of Silence has descended. A veil has been drawn. Secrecy has prevailed as the wizards have labored behind the green curtain to find a way out of California's $42-billion budget hole. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the top four legislative leaders have again been meeting behind closed doors as California teeters at the brink of fiscal insolvency. Rank-and-file lawmakers, special interest groups and the public have been shut out of the bargaining process. There have been no public hearings, no chance for input -- and that has...

Obama pick faces questions over bombers' clemencyBy PETE YOST Associated Press Writer Originally published Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 2:05 PM WASHINGTON — New York police detective Anthony S. Senft's life changed forever when a bomb set by Puerto Rican separatists exploded, blowing him 15 feet in the air and blinding him in one eye. Now, he's angry that Eric Holder, who played a key role in awarding clemency to the bombers, is in line to be attorney general. Holder, as President Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general, worked closely with the Justice Department's pardon attorney to raise the possibility of...

Like a giant oil tanker with a breached hull, the SS Obama is leaving a film of sludge everywhere it goes. Starting with the phony birth certificate all the way up until the arrest of buddy Blago, his history has been one of secrets and obfuscation. We don't know where he was born. Some say Hawaii. Others say Kenya. He refuses to release his birth certificate to clear this up. We don't know who paid for his Ivy League schools. Percy Sutton, former borough president of Manhattan (NYC) says that he facilitated Obama's education by introducing him to Rashid Khalidi....

Shhhh. What's the big secret? When it comes to Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums' deliberations on matters of grave importance - they are cloaked in more secrecy than an illegal CIA counterterrorist operation. When Dellums ran for mayor in 2006, he pledged to run a transparent government. Yet at a time when Oakland needs a strong leader to deal with budget cuts and lack of leadership in several key departments, Dellums is missing in action and his decision- making process is one of the best kept secrets in Oakland City Hall. I don't think even the mayor knows what's going on...

SPIEGEL: So you support stricter regulation and more efficient control of the markets? Soros: Indeed. However, you have to recognize that regulations will never be completely successful and they will always be full of holes. You must constantly be ready to fill new holes. Actually regulation should be kept to a minimum, but there has to be some cooperation between market participants and authorities -- as was the case in the early postwar years. The Bank of England was a very successful regulator by cooperating with market participants. This cooperative spirit was broken by the market fundamentalists. SPIEGEL: Not in...

Switzerland is likely to come under further pressure from the United States over its prized system of banking secrecy after the election last week of Barack Obama, key sector players predicted. The newly-elected US president, who formally takes office in January, is known for his hard line on fiscal evasion, having jointly presented a "Tax Haven Abuse Act" to the Senate back in 2007. Switzerland was one of 34 countries listed as a potential site for tax evasion by US clients in the bill and observers said that while that particular piece of legislation is unlikely to see the light...

Jim Geraghty takes a look at longstanding blog buzz over Barack Obama’s birth certificate, which the campaign refused to release to the St. Petersburg Times in April: We tried to obtain a copy of Obama’s birth certificate, but his campaign would not release it and the state of Hawaii does not make such records public. Has anyone seen it? Why shouldn’t the record be in the public domain for presidential candidates? Geraghty walks through various rumors now circulating in the wake of the Obama campaign’s birth certificate blackout, including this one: Rumor Three: His mother did not want to name...

The Texas Transportation Commission sounded the right notes last month in its first meeting under new leadership. Deirdre Delisi, recently appointed by Gov. Rick Perry to chair the commission, and her fellow commissioners finally seem to have gotten the message — the Texas Department of Transportation has lost the public's trust. For those with short memories, here are a few highlights that explain how that happened: •TxDOT fought to keep details of Perry's proposed Trans-Texas Corridor secret. It denied repeated requests from the media and landowners to let the public view a plan that calls for hundreds of miles of...

Many in the great state of Texas have a lot to say about a proposed network of toll roads and railway lines known as the Trans-Texas Corridor. The Texas Department of Transportation received more than 27,000 public comments during a three-month comment period on a proposed corridor project called the TTC-69, said TxDOT spokesman Mark Cross. Transportation officials had 47 public hearings in February and March and accepted written comments through April 18 on the environmental and social impact of the corridor. Comments ranged from flat-out opposition to the corridor to suggestions about how to lessen its impact, Cross told...

Now the world knows Prince Harry is in Afghanistan, the question on many lips is whether it was right for the media to keep quiet about it for so long.

Officials from Alabama, Florida and Georgia signed a confidentiality agreement in January that includes two private utilities and prohibits the parties from disclosing to the public details of the ongoing negotiations over water rights in the region. A Florida seafood industry group says the secrecy deal is illegal and is asking the state's open government commission to throw it out. ``It just fuels suspicion on the part of people down here whose livelihoods depend on this,'' Kevin Begos, executive director of the Franklin County Oyster & Seafood Task Force, said Tuesday. The task force obtained a copy of the agreement...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Rodham Clinton have secrecy issues dogging them. The front-runners in national polls for their parties' nominations both are grappling with disclosure controversies as they seek to succeed President Bush, known as one of the most secretive chief executives in modern history. For the Republican former New York mayor, the primary issue is Giuliani Partners, the consulting business he formed when he left City Hall. He still works for the firm but won't shed light on its business dealings or release a client list. He's not required to; the company is privately...

The Bush administration is laying out a new secrecy defense in an effort to end a court battle about the White House visits of now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The administration agreed last year to produce all responsive records about the visits "without redactions or claims of exemption," according to a court order. But in a court filing Friday night, administration lawyers said that sometime in the past year the Secret Service identified a category of highly sensitive documents that might contain information sought in a lawsuit about Abramoff's trips to the White House. The Justice Department declared that the contents...

There are hundreds of pages worth of memos and correspondence that involve Hillary's healthcare plan in the early 1990s. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-archives11nov11,0,4319964.story?page=1&coll=la-home-nation But you will probably never get to see any of this correspondence, because federal government archivists have deemed the material "confidential." It is being withheld under federal law allowing the restriction of "private communications between presidential advisors." Let's take a look at some of the memos: "Positioning ourselves on healthcare." Not available. This is confidential advice. How about, "General targeting strategy." Also not available. So guess who the Clintons are blaming for all of this mysteriously unavailable material? The Government!...

Shortly before Rudy Giuliani left the New York mayor's office in 2001, close associates worked out an unprecedented and controversial deal to transfer his mayoral papers from city hall to a private, tax-exempt foundation, the Rudolph W. Giuliani Center for Urban Affairs. Billed as a leadership think tank, the center served as a conduit for Giuliani to copy and archive 2,100 boxes of documents from his time as mayor before returning the originals to the city. That record, which includes the months after the Sept. 11 attacks when he was anointed as "America's mayor," serves as the foundation of Giuliani's...

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) says it needs to spend $9 million in taxpayer money to sell its vision of transportation policy to the public. Maybe if TxDOT pursued rational transportation policies, the public support would follow, and it could spend that $9 million building and maintaining roads. Here’s why Texans ought to be concerned. Borrowing carries a price tag. The Texas Constitution has traditionally eschewed deficit spending and required existing revenue to pay for existing spending. Now, the state wants to build most of its roads by borrowing, either publicly or by getting a private firm to agree...

A number of House Republicans on the committee cheered Colonel North on. One who led the way was Dick Cheney of Wyoming, who praised Colonel North as “the most effective and impressive witness certainly this committee has heard.” Mr. Cheney the congressman believed that Congress had usurped executive prerogatives. He saw the Iran-contra investigation not as an effort to get to the bottom of possible abuses of power but as a power play by Congressional Democrats to seize duties and responsibilities that constitutionally belonged to the president. Mr. Cheney’s quest to accumulate unaccountable executive power — a quest that has...

China's military buildup is moving beyond countering Taiwan to global operations from the Middle East through Southeast Asia, according to the Pentagon's annual assessment of Chinese military power. "China's military acquisitions and strategic thinking suggests Beijing is also generating capabilities for other regional contingencies, such as conflict over resources or territory," the report to Congress said. The statement, released yesterday, contradicts assessments of some pro-China analysts and intelligence officials who have said the nation's military buildup is relatively benign and limited to resolving the sovereignty issue of Taiwan, which was separated from China in 1949 during a civil war. China...

This week, federal prosecutors proposed a procedure that while purporting to protect national defense secrets would have denied the AIPAC defendants a public trial and exposed this information to more than a dozen people with no security clearances and no obligation to keep this information secret. Federal judge T.S. Ellis, III laughed them out of court.

VALERIE PLAME AND JOSEPH WILSON: THE BAD NEWS BOORS © by Norman Liebmann It’s time to reconsider Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame, two operatives of the maggot-infested Washington bureaucracy. The Wilsons are mid-level non-entities bobbing in a sea of Republican apathy. Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame are darlings of the liberal Guttercrats that infest Washington and worm through the rot of its agencies and commissions. The Wilsons are a couple of party animals who think of themselves as the Fred and Ginger of Georgetown. They are, in fact, the Al and Peg Bundy of mid-level bureaucracy, the Bonnie and Clyde...

For more than 160 years the Smithsonian Institution made America's remarkable history available to one and all. In keeping with founder James Smithson's benevolent vision of "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," the institution's taxpayer-subsidized museums, exhibits and archives used to be open to the general public, students and legitimate researchers. But not anymore -- and it's an outrage that I'm taking personally. My "War Stories" producers and I asked for access to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington's Dulles International Airport. We were commencing production of a...

Readers of the AIM Report are accustomed to learning of huge distortions or omissions by the media. This time, the under-reported story deals with the possible end of America, as we know it. Major players are secretive and are trying to keep the media out of the loop. But that does not let the mainstream media off the hook. There is enough stonewalling, secrecy and there are plenty of telltale signs, so that any assignment editor whose curiosity is not aroused is probably in the wrong business. But in terms of the national media, only Lou Dobbs of CNN has...

Pennsylvania is one of the rare states that don’t presume documents held by government agencies to be public. Should this be changed? Yes - Government has a tendency to lead those involved in it to corruption and laziness so open government makes for better government. No - We can trust our hard-working bureaucrats and they don’t need to be pestered by private citizens.

The Ministry of Defence went to extraordinary lengths to cover up its true involvement in investigating UFOs, according to secret documents revealed under the Freedom of Information Act. The files show that officials attempted to expunge information from documents released to the Public Records Office under the "30-year rule" that would have revealed the extent of the MoD's interest in UFO sightings. In particular, the ministry wanted to cover up the operation of a secret unit dedicated to UFO investigations within the Defence Intelligence Staff. UFO conspiracy theorists have likened the unit, called DI55, to a sort of "Men in...

Pat Hensen spent a good part of his 35-year career with the Soil Conservation Service (now Natural Resource Conservation Service) helping Texas Blacklands farmers improve their land. And he’s invested considerable time, effort and money the last 20 years doing the same on his own or leased acreage. And it may all end up under yards of concrete and asphalt if the Trans Texas Corridor passes muster and follows the latest proposed route. “My farm would be in the middle of it,” Hensen says from his Bell County living room where he and wife Loretta participate in a grassroots campaign...

ENNIS - Corridor Watch, a nonprofit organization designed to inform the public about aspects of the Trans-Texas Corridor, presented its perceptions about the highway project to an Ellis County audience Thursday evening. The event was sponsored by Independent Texans and held at the Ennis Sixth Grade Center. Corridor Watch, which was founded by Linda and David Stall of Fayetteville, is “first and foremost an educational entity,” said David Stall, who added that the group’s “biggest concern is stopping the Trans-Texas Corridor.” Stall, speaking for the anti-TTC Corridor Watch, raised several questions about the TTC, ranging from its origins to its...

It has gotten to the point where you don't know whether to pity Gov. Rick Perry and the toll road zealots in this state or arm some of their equally scary foes with pitchforks and torches to storm the governor's mansion. And I say that as someone who is willing to give Perry and company the benefit of the doubt and agree that new funding mechanisms like tollways should be part of the state's solution to future highway needs. But the way state transportation officials are approaching the Trans-Texas Corridor, a 50-year plan to produce a statewide network of toll...

It was the last week of July, heading into the lazy dog days of official Washington, but Michael Chertoff was suddenly busy. The homeland security secretary discreetly asked subordinates about plans developed months or even years ago, focused on aviation safety, threat levels and other minutiae. In briefings, he quizzed staffers about responses to an aviation threat: What was the default plan for going to "orange alert"? What items can we ban from airplanes if we need to? Those taking the questions -- including many of Chertoff's closest aides -- had no idea what was really going on, two senior...

By FRANK MIELE Loyalty is generally considered a virtue. Disloyalty is generally considered a vice. But one must sometimes choose between conflicting loyalties, and one’s choices on such occasions go a long way toward defining a person’s character. For instance, a person might have a great love for his or her country, and yet have a greater love for God. If such people hold in their heart a religious belief that war is immoral, then they are granted a conscientious objector status and exempted from combat duty. Are these people disloyal to the United States? Not at all, but they...

May 12, 2006 — Americans by nearly a 2-1 ratio call the surveillance of telephone records an acceptable way for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, expressing broad unconcern even if their own calling patterns are scrutinized. Lending support to the administration's defense of its anti-terrorism intelligence efforts, 63 percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say the secret program, disclosed Thursday by USA Today, is justified, while far fewer, 35 percent, call it unjustified. Indeed, 51 percent approve of the way President Bush is handling the protection of privacy rights, while 47 percent disapprove — hardly a...

Page A22 THE UNITED STATES has never had an Official Secrets Act -- a law that would forbid anyone, even a private citizen, from disclosing information the government wants to keep under wraps. But if the Justice Department has its way in the prosecution of two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), it will effectively have created one -- without even going to Congress for a change in the law. The case against Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman is heading toward trial. Their conviction would herald a dangerous aggrandizement of the government's power not merely...

A case filed in Superior Court in Sacramento this week could reveal which state legislator or legislators are responsible for avoiding the competitive bidding process mandated by the California Public Contract Code. The purposes of the Contract Code are to “[protect] the public from misuse of public funds,” to “provide all qualified bidders with a fair opportunity to enter the bidding process, thereby stimulating competition in a manner conducive to sound fiscal practices” and to “eliminate favoritism, fraud, and corruption in the awarding of public contracts.” According to the case, the California legislature has been disregarding these principles and getting...

Everyone agrees this is a trying time, and everyone--contrary to George Bush--agrees there actually are people out there trying to harm Americans. Everyone I know, even my most liberal of friends, agrees that there are people attacking us but disagrees about the solution. But in case you missed it, George Bush thinks he's still trying to convince people that Americans are targets: I understand there’s some in America who say, ‘Well, this can’t be true there are still people willing to attack.’ All I would ask them to do is listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take...

Tucson, Arizona [Pima] County officials plan to hold a closed meeting Tuesday to talk about the state open-meetings law. The ironic closed session is scheduled for the Board of Supervisors' Jan. 3 meeting in order to brief members on the legal fine points of open meetings. "We're an elected body and we need to set the example for open government," said Supervisor Ann Day, justifying the need for the closed session. "It's a refresher, a preventive thing, so we set the example and don't make any mistakes," she said. The open-meetings law says all meetings of any public body must...

The Texas Department of Transportation's fight to guard the financial details of the Trans-Texas Corridor has sparked a rallying cry for corridor opponents and resulted in a court battle over open records. Corridor watchdogs argue that the state should make public its financial and development master plans with Cintra Zachry LP, the group chosen by the state to help plan and build the first section of a proposed transportation network that would criss-cross the state with roads, railways and utility infrastructure. “This is the largest land grab in Texas history, and to not let the people see the financial details...

<p>For years, a citizen who wanted to know the name and phone number of a Pentagon official could buy a copy of the Defense Department directory at a government printing office. But since 2001, the directory has been stamped ''For Official Use Only," meaning the public may not have access to such basic information about the vast military bureaucracy.</p>