Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wayners who wrote (697441)	8/20/2005 5:31:15 AM
From: sandintoes	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Maybe now we'll find out what really happened.. FOIA Exposes Clinton Anti-Terror Blunders Mark Tapscott (archive) August 20, 2005 Bill and Hillary Clinton and other Big Government advocates probably weren’t smiling earlier this week when two milestones in the history of the Right and FOIA reform happened on successive days. On Tuesday, the world learned that eight major Conservative Movement leaders have signed a letter of encouragement to Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican seeking passage of “The Open Government Act of 2005.” Among much else, Cornyn’s bill – which was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Lamar Smith, another Texas GOPer, - would for the first time in its history put real teeth in the FOIA by establishing concrete penalties for individual bureaucrats and agencies that violate the law. Why is that significant? Because the FOIA guarantees every American the right to see all government documents, subject only to some reasonable exceptions for things like national security, law enforcement, privacy and commercial secrets. But there are presently no penalties for not providing documents that should be public. No wonder a 2003 survey by the National Security Archive of 35 federal agencies that received 97 percent of the 3 million FOIAs sent to Uncle Sam annually found “a system in extreme disarray,” with chronic delays, lost or ignored requests, improper denials and epic bouts of bureaucratic game-playing to avoid public accountability. The eight influential conservatives stepping up to help change things include: David Keene, Chairman of the American Conservative Union; Mark Levin, President of Landmark Legal Foundation; John Berthoud, President of the National Taxpayers Union; Amy Ridenour, President of the National Center for Public Policy Research; Brent Bozell, President of the Media Research Center; Mike Krempasky, Founding Director of RedState.org; Terence Scanlon, Chairman of Capital Research Center, and Alex Mooney, Executive Director of Young America’s Foundation’s National Journalism Center. That’s a list of genuine heavy hitters of the Right. Keene was a Reagan campaign stalwart and is among the movement’s most respected veterans. Levin, who served as Attorney General Ed Meese’s Chief of Staff under Reagan, used the FOIA to expose partisan political coordination between teachers unions and the Democratic National Committee in 1996. Berthoud’s NTU is well-known for its hard-hitting work on tax and spending issues, while Ridenour heads a key fixture in the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy’s network of influential think tanks. Krempasky has led the effective opposition to the Federal Election Commission’s recent proposal to regulate political speech on the Internet. Mooney is an energetic Maryland State Senator who is helping forge that state’s resurgent conservative activism. Scanlon ably headed the Consumer Products Safety Commission during the Reagan years and Bozell pioneered the Right’s devastating critique of liberal media bias. Then on Wednesday, Judicial Watch hit the front page of The New York Times with shocking new revelations based on documents obtained under FOIA about Clinton’s inept response to Osama Bin Laden and international terrorism. It took Judicial Watch four years of hard work, persistence and legal wit to outsmart the bureaucrats who opposed making the documents public. Judicial Watch has a long history of using the FOIA to pry loose documents that Washington politicians and bureaucrats find embarrassing, beginning early in the Clintons’ first term in the White House. Then Judicial Watch fought a lengthy battle to force the Commerce Department to disclose hundreds of documents that illustrated Clinton’s politicalization of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown’s trade junkets around the world. It shouldn’t take years for the American people to get all the facts about what is being done in their name by their government, but it often does because the people who control the official documents also control access to those documents. The current FOIA was first passed in 1966 because, as Donald Rumsfeld, then a young Republican congressman, said, the bureaucrats who were "most familiar with the inadequacies of the present law ... learned how to take advantage of its vague phrases" to bar disclosure of documents they wanted to keep behind closed doors. Such opponents of the FOIA included executive branch bureaucrats with "a vested interest in the machinery of their agencies and bureaus" who resent "any attempt to oversee their activities either by the public, the Congress or appointed department heads," Rumsfeld said. Even so, it took 11 years of debate and hard work by FOIA proponents before Congress passed and President Johnson signed the measure into law. With the Blogosphere doubling every five or six months, thousands of smart, energetic folks on the Right are joining the new media that is replacing institutional dinosaurs like CBS and The Washington Post. The new media mavens shouldn’t have to wait years for a reformed FOIA with real teeth. Mark Tapscott, a veteran townhall.com