It has received the least attention of his first-day decisions, but President Barack Obama’s memorandum on reviving the Freedom of Information Act stands as the clearest signal yet that his campaign talk about “a new era of open government” wasn’t just rhetoric; it’s for real.
The key phrase comes right at the top: “The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”
Later in the memo: “All agencies should adopt a presumption of disclosure. … The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”
Furthermore, “In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies should act properly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.” In fact, “All agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public.”
This could not be clearer. The new president was calling for a complete reversal of the Bush administration’s directives on this matter—and a restoration of the Freedom of Information Act’s original purpose.
In other redefining government news from the Obamanation…
President Barack Obama is staffing his Justice Department with some of his predecessor’s fiercest critics, among them lawyers who were fired by President Bush or who quit jobs working for his administration.
Now, the opposition is in charge, and lawyers who spent years defining the limits of executive power will be helping wield it.
[…]
“I think they will be an irritant for Obama in the best possible way — they’re very honest lawyers,” said Rosa Brooks, a professor at Georgetown University Law School, where Lederman also taught. “When Dawn and Marty and David think that he is asking if he can do something that in their view pushes the envelope and goes beyond the bounds of what is legal, they’re going to say, ‘Sorry Mr. Obama, we think that would be illegal.’”
Honest lawyers at the Justice Dept. What will they think of next?
Transparent/honest government requires the use of FOIA act become very rare and not really needed.
EVERYTHING should be on line and available to the whole world.
Thats transparency.
Still a good first step. Yes, Change I could only hope to see.
I’ll be more comfortable when he renounces his view that he’d like to use the courts to nullify parts of the Constitution he disagrees with…
It’s good to see Obama beginning to restore people’s confidence in government.
At the end of the day confidence in our government, the financial systems, our directions as a nation and our leadership is THE critical foundation we need restored.
#2 PaddyoO. I’ve seen this Obama Constitution thing before brought up. What exactly are you guys bitching about now?
Quite honestly, the republicans lack of concern about Cheney’s abuse of the Constitution has me puzzled why this is now such a big concern but anxious to here what the hubbub from the right is now…
# 3 Dallas said, “At the end of the day confidence in our government, the financial systems,”
Oh, poor, all to soon to be disappointed Dallas:
Alan Greenspan at a speech dated December 19, 2002 before the Economic Club of New York.
“Although the gold standard could hardly be portrayed as having produced a period of price tranquility, it was the case that the price level in 1929 was not much different, on net, from what it had been in 1800. But, in the two decades following the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933, the consumer price index in the United States nearly doubled. And, in the four decades after that, prices quintupled. Monetary policy, unleashed from the constraint of domestic gold convertibility, has allowed a persistent over issuance of money. As recently as a decade ago, central bankers, having witnessed more than a half-century of chronic inflation, appeared to confirm that a fiat currency was inherently subject to excess.”
A president keeping campaign promises??!!? Who’da thunk it?
Check out his weekly address (fireside chat?):
http://tinyurl.com/clu8sl
And note that in the background, he’s got books. And, they’re not coloring books.
I wish he’d drop the biofuels. But this is a huge improvement, IMNSHO.
Executive orders with campaign speeches are nice, and nothing new. It’s the actions that matter.
Putting in fierce critics of George Bush to work for you, doesn’t mean they’ll be watchdogs in your administration. Just look at how the media treats Obama compared to Bush.
# 6 Misanthropic Scott said, “I wish he’d drop the biofuels.”
I agree. I think he will as long as he sees the non-viability of it.
Step 1: Fix the Freedom of Information Act
Step 2: Demand that the Treasury release the names of the banks it has lent money to, and how much.
I’m really starting to believe in this guy. I would’ve taken at least a couple of days to ‘settle in’. This guys workin’ hard everyday since day one. If he keeps this up his wife is gonna start complaining. Transparency, wow, maybe politics and politicians ain’t the steaming pile of shit I thought they were…
We’ll see.
#6, #8 “I wish he’d drop the biofuels.”
Oddly, fossil fuels are nothing but the remains of dead bio. Oh, the irony.
# 11 Dallas said, “Oddly, fossil fuels are nothing but the remains of dead bio. Oh, the irony.”
That’s the funniest aspect of the whole scam.
This will last about a month or so.
Oops. Obama has nine civilian Pakistanis killed Friday by missile attack in the village of Zharki.
Shooting missiles into civilian occupied structures where no one is attacking you from, is a War Crime.
When does Obama turn himself in?
#13 said
“This will last about a month or so.”
I’m not sure of the timeframe – but, sadly, I believe you are right.
Obama (and I wish him the best), let alone all the people he appoints, isn’t going to want to answer all of the questions all of the time. Or probably even most of them.
Just a matter of time.
I hope I’m wrong.
#14, Paddy-O
Shut the F Up. You don’t make any sense.
Obama’s policies were pretty easy to draft up.
1) Look at what Bush did
2) Do the opposite.
Well. A sockpuppet troll commented. We’ll keep count on how many dodge or are hypocritical…
Stay tuned.
Latest:
Pakistan officials have contacted US State Dept and asked to have Obama stop violating the Geneva Convention by killing civilians in Pak with missile strikes, and thus committing war crimes. As of this afternoon the Obama Admin hasn’t responded.
Stay tuned for more, Change You Can Believe In…
#20 keep us posted on that. I highly encourage Bush lackey left overs to occupy yourselves on Bush’s war while we clean up his economic mess over here. The important thing is you get out of the way.
#21, The step to cleaning up the economic mess would be to pull our troops home and stop spending $1T/year keeping them overseas.
#20–Paddy===ok, I’ll bite. Its not illegal or a violation of GC to kill civilians==only to intentionally target them. So, my question is, how do you know this was done, what GC are you referring, or have you made up a new rule of your own, or AS I SUSPECT===have you totally misunderstood another pretty simple concept?
Okay, tally so far:
1 hypocrite & one coward who can’t face facts…
What a novel idea. An open government that promotes good citizen self government, involvement and awareness.
Those abusive bureaucrats must be fuming now, “how dare you let the public know”.
#10 – amo
>>I’m really starting to believe in this guy.
Most people are, even the harshest of his pre-election naysayers. Only losers like Anal Cyst Limbaugh aren’t willing to at least give him a chance.
Oh, and ‘dro…? STFU.
#17 – ‘dro
>>Hmmm, who could be that bright mind that
>>tells people that 4 letter acronym????
By the way, ‘dro, “STFU” is an abbreviation, not an acronym.
An acronym is something you say, like “S.W.A.T”, or “WiFi”, or, on occasion, POTUS. If it’s just the first letters of each word, like STFU or FBI, we call that an abbreviation.
Mustard==I’d like you to for ONCE admit to an error, although you may have reference to your very own dictionary as you so regularly do. Nonetheless, for the pure irony of it, we have to engage in set theory:
Abbreviation: something shortened
Acronym: something shortened by taking the first letter of each word.
All Acronyms are a type of Abreviation.
#28 – Bobo
Aw, why did I just KNOW you were going to have to stick your nose in here?
Maybe in your pantywaisted Webster’s online dictionary, where everything is anything you want it to be, that definition holds.
In 1943, Bell Laboratories coined the term acronym as the name for a WORD (i.e., something that is spoken, such as SONAR) created from the first letters of each word in a series of words.
Read up on it in Fischer, Roswitha. (1998). Lexical change in present-day English: A corpus-based study of the motivation, institutionalization, and productivity of creative neologisms. Tübingen: G. Narr.
Latter day know-it-alls use “acronym” (when they mean abbreviation) in the same sentence where they say “between you and I”, and for the same reason. They erroneously believe that it makes them appear more erudite. In reality, it flags them as a pretentious know-nothing.
As far as me admitting an error goes….when I make one, let me know. I’ll be the first to admit it.
And you really need to upgrade your dictionary, son. Does that thing you use have Ebonics words in it too?
[As far as my admitting an error goes. – Possessive with the participle. – ed.]
Mustard==let me get this now, you are saying that acronyms don’t exist in writing, they can only be spoken?
Logic.
ALL acronyms are abbreviations, not all abbreviations are acronyms.
tick, tick, tick==ok. Thanks to set theory I see your point that NO abbreviation is a “word” but that ALL acronyms are.
So—STFU is an abbrieviation, but it is not an acronym and it is not a word.
I note that both acronms and abbrieviations can be and often are spoken.
Thanks Musty==I learned something. Thats at least one of us.
#30 – Bobo
I think it’s past your bedtime.
>>let me get this now, you are saying that
>>acronyms don’t exist in writing, they can
>>only be spoken?
What I said was (and I quote) “an acronym is the name for a WORD (i.e., something that is spoken, such as SONAR) created from the first letters of each word in a series of words.”
So SONAR is an acronym. RADAR is an acronym. FUBAR and snafu are acronyms. FEMA is an acronym. NATO is an acronym. FBI, CIA, ASPCA, NSA, NYPD, NYFD, USA, and IBM are all abbreviation.
From about dot grammar dot com:
““The difference between acronyms and abbreviations is this: acronyms are proper words created from the initial letter or two of the words in a phrase, and they are pronounced like other words (cf. snafu, radar, laser, or UNESCO). By contrast, abbreviations do not form proper words, and so they are pronounced as strings of letters, for example, S.O.B., IOU, U.S.A., MP, lp, or tv.”
(Keith Allan and Kate Burridge, Euphemism and Dysphemism, Oxford University Press, 1991).
As to where they can can exist, you’ll like this: They can appear ANYWHERE. In writing, in speech, in braille, TTY, Morse code, you can see them with 3D glasses, you can spell them out in semaphore, anywhere at all! It’s the speakability of the entity that determines its acronymicity. Whether it is actually spoken in a given instance is immaterial.
Got it? STFU is not an acronym.