Free Republic

Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot. That argument comes despite...

Barack Obama, US president, takes to the road this week on his "summer of recovery" drive amid concern that the White House has lost the political narrative over its handling of the economy, in spite of having taken strong steps to bring it back from the brink.

On Saturday, Feb. 13, 2010, in a televised speech to the OIC a 57-country block of Islamic States, President Obama named 31-year-old Rashad Hussain as his envoy to the OIC. “Rashad has played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in Cairo,” Obama told the gathering in the video message. “And as a hafiz of the Koran, he is a respected member of the American Muslim community, and I thank him for carrying forward this important work.” (A hafiz is someone who has memorized the Islamic text.) Soon as Rashad was named the controversy began, specifically because...