Pirate's Cove

It’s the Most Transparent Administration Ever! Or so we were told it would be. Until Team Obama realized that people would actually request information, such as White House visitor logs, details on half billion dollar political payback loans, and programs that walk guns into Mexico to drug dealers and gang lords which end up killing lots of people, including US law enforcement agents

(Daily Caller) A proposed revision to Freedom of Information Act rules would allow federal agencies to lie to citizens and reporters seeking certain records, telling them the records don’t exist.

The Justice Department has proposed the change as part of a large revision of FOIA rules for federal agencies. Specifically, the rule would direct government agencies who are denying a request under an established FOIA exemption to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist,” rather than citing the relevant exemption.

Isn’t that special? Don’t want the People to know? Say it doesn’t exist. It’s that simply. No, no, there’s no information about why we decided to not prosecute the New Black Panthers for intimidating people to not vote while holding clubs. Fast and Furious documents? There’s no such program. But, remember, Obama did except a Transparency Award in private.

The proposed rule has alarmed government transparency advocates across the political spectrum, who’ve called it “Orwellian” and say it will “twist” public access to government.

In a public comment regarding the rule change, the ACLU, along with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and OpenTheGovernment.org, said the move “will dramatically undermine government integrity by allowing a law designed to provide public access to government information to be twisted to permit federal law enforcement agencies to actively lie to the American people.”

When even the ACLU has an issue with something Team Obama pushes, you know it must be really bad. Of course, they may be looking ahead to 2013 when a Republican is in the White House and the GOP controls Congress, where the Republicans can say “hey, we’re just operating under the rules Democrats put in place”, much like they could say “hey, Obama did X while president and you never complained, why are you complaining now?”

This is just another way for Team Obama to hide their actions, much like how they hide behind czars who are not accountable to Congress. So far, only about 1% of 500,000 meetings on the White House logs have been released. From his first 8 months in office. Visitors are missing from those logs. Team Obama met with lobbyists in coffee shops to avoid even having a record.

But, why do this instead of simply hiding behind something like “national security”? As ProPublica writes

….because a last resort is to sue to obtain the records, something people requesting information might not do if they assumed that no records existed.

So, lie. Hide. Here’s your hope and change, comrades, on the road to fascism.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU. Please sign the drill now petition.