Obama Orders Could Open Records

WaPo ^ | January 21, 2009 | Sarah Cohen

[Red Steel]

Barack Obama's first acts as president included signing three orders today that could open public access to documents and records that had been closed off during the Bush administration.

Obama reversed George W. Bush's restrictions on access to records of former presidents. He also told the Justice Department to write new guidance to agencies on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to improve transparency, and gave top officials in his administration four months to create a new "Open Government Directive" that he said would go beyond the requirements of the open records law.

If the new rules are followed within the government, they could open scores of records that have been closed for years to the public and reporters. Some agencies, with the encouragement of the Bush administration's legal advisers in the Justice Department, have reached deep into FOIA's exemptions to withhold information.

During the military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, for example, the names of drugs forcibly administered to prisoners were withheld, claiming they would create "an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" -- one of the law's reasons for rejection. News organizations and local citizen groups have had little access to information on toxic chemical spills that used to be readily available on the Internet. And agencies have tried to rebuff The Post and other news organizations on such requests as the schedules of high-level officials, the names and salaries of political appointees, and inspection results for government-owned or subsidized housing.

-snip-

The two memoranda to agency heads reverse the Bush administration's policy of rejecting requests for records whenever there is a justification in the loosely worded Freedom of Information Act.

One of Obama's memos says: "The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.

[panthermom]

We all know that Obama’s arrogance is beyond pale. The POS, with all of his transparency will not let us see ONE document with regard to him, we need to rely on books that HE wrote about himself.

I truly don’t think that Bush and Cheney were these evil war mongers. There is absolutely no way anyone can say how they would respond after 9/11. What would be something is if these records were released and it came to bear that we had not even an iota of of how truly maniacal our enemies are and they did a fantastic job of protecting us, only to have realized that the press has been lying to us and thus we now have Dumb and Dumber in charge. Like they say, be careful what you wish for.

[lonestar]

It had better include your Democrat buddines in Congress too. I’d love to take a peek at their ‘records’.

I don't even want to see Barney Franks' file!

[Puddleglum]

Clinton donation records?

Turbo-tax details?

See, we have a press and a culture where facts and honesty are two different things. I think this will be used instrumentally to paint USA=Bad, Dems = Good.

The press doesn’t even care about honesty and candor anymore. They want exploitable facts that can hurt people they don’t like, and all others are minutae.

[CriticalJ]

“The press doesn’t even care about honesty and candor anymore. They want exploitable facts that can hurt people they don’t like, and all others are minutae.”

So true.

Look at the consequences. The press is dying.

Try real journalism. It might save jobs.

[supremedoctrine]

“we need to rely on BOOKS that he wrote about himself”.
——Jack Cashill has made a pretty good case, with one
unbelievably striking example in particular , that indicate that, if Bill Ayers did not oversee the writing of the “big” book, the one that’s cited as being so good,
then we are living in a parallel universe where magical coincidence is the order of the day. Can’t remember which Ayers writing it came from, or which publication date was first, but if it wasn’t writing by Ayers, it was theft by Obama OF Ayers. Either way, Obama probably provided “source material” but everything about what Cashill reveals indicate “Dreams from my Father” is another one of those “as told to”, or with the help of
citations we are using to seeing on the covers of political memoirs. It is OBVIOUS the post-modern pawprints of Ayers’ amateurism are all over “Dreams”. In particular, look for the use , in both books, of a highly metaphorical
piece of folk wisdom about tides and which way rivers run.
Everything else being equal, there is not a chance in hell that Ayers did not exercise a critical editor/writer’s hand in this book.

[panthermom]

Even if he didn’t exactly write the books, they were written with his approval. Now if Kitty Kelly had written his biorgraphy, that would be more believable in my opinion.