Well this essentially renders FOIA obsolete. If judges can pick and choose when FOIA can be used after federal agencies stonewall, it becomes meaningless. There's no need to squelch this information. Is there?
I was raised to respect the FBI. I enjoyed reading books about the agency and thought highly of it.
Over the last 14 years, that respect and trust has been utterly destroyed. It's so bad that you even have to question the courts these days. Our justice system has certainly gone down hill.
"f judges can pick and choose when FOIA can be used after federal agencies stonewall, it becomes meaningless"
This means that Congress can go home and we can use the capital building for a museum or a library. The judges are making the law.
Factor in the dollar-sucking lawyers, and I think this country has a government of money, by money and for the money.
Over the last 14 years, that respect and trust has been utterly destroyed. It's so bad that you even have to question the courts these days. Our justice system has certainly gone down hill.
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Very Well Put!
I grew up listening to "The FBI in Peace and War" and "The Untouchables". The "G-Men" were truly my heroes.
Then, what I read and saw about Waco, Ruby Ridge, WTC 1, TWA 800, etc. very nearly destroyed my trust and admiration for "our" "glorious and honorable" law enforcement agencies.
But was my "up close and personal" investigation of their activites re OKBOMB that turned that trust into abhorrent disdain.
Now, I seriously doubt that I will live long enough to see that trust restored -- even if the FBI, the BATFE, the CIA, the Courts, and the DOJ -- for starters -- were totally disbanded today ...and were rebuilt from scratch by someone I trust explicitly.
In my sad experience, I fear the rot in those agencies is simply too deep and noxious. Now that those we once trusted to dig out and publish the truth have become the prime actors in destroying and hiding that truth, I fear that justice in our land has passed beyond reach...
Over the last 14 years, that respect and trust has been utterly destroyed.
Same here, but I'm a great-grandfather. I lost respect for them over Ruby Ridge. That was the start. Waco took things down another notch, especially from what I saw of the Congressional hearings, and by the time they were talking about OK City and in an all-fired hurry to destroy the crime scene, I smelled a few rats.
When they 'investigated' the Flight 800 incident, they laboriously yabbled about the number of man-hours involved, and the number of people they interviewed.
That is a fine cover-up for not asking the right people the right questions. It might play well enough with the average sofa spud catching the sound bytes on the nightly news, but it set off my BS alarm.
Especially when I was reading from non-mainstream sources that a multitude of people who saw 'something bright, leaving a trail (sometimes) heading up toward what became a fireball in the sky, and that these folks, by and large (well over 100 of them) were not being interviewed, even after contacting the agency.
At that point, I, for one, felt that the agency had gone from being a federal investigative arm to the folks who produced the supporting script for whatever the Clintons wanted us to hear.
While they are cleaning out the Clinton-era (leaker) people (moles) at CIA, maybe they should look at the FBI as well.