Free Republic

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean (news - web sites), who has criticized the Bush administration for refusing to release the deliberations of its energy policy task force, as governor of Vermont convened a similar panel that met in secret and angered state lawmakers. Dean's group held one public hearing and after the fact volunteered the names of industry executives and liberal advocates it consulted in private, but Dean refused to open the task force's private deliberations. In 1999, he offered the same argument the administration uses today for keeping deliberations of a policy task force secret. "The governor...