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Obama Sides With Bush Again
This time over the Bush administration's refusal to release then-Vice President Dick Cheney's interview with the FBI regarding his role in the Valerie Plame leak. At the time, Bush and his attorney general, Michael Mukasey, cited executive privilege. They also floated the idea that future officials would be unwilling to cooperate with criminal investigations if they knew their interviews could be made public. Except special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald never offered Cheney confidentiality. But the Obama administration—citing arguments similar to Bush's—has refused to make the interview public.
So Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act, whose guidelines Attorney General Eric Holder altered in March "to favor disclosure and transparency." They argue their case in U.S. District court on Thursday, and it appears they will base their argument partially on Holder's own loosening of Ashcroft-era FOIA restrictions. In an April letter to the Justice Department, CREW's attorney David Sobel wrote:
As the Attorney General has directed, echoing the words of President Obama, information should not be withheld “merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, [or] because errors and failures might be revealed.”
That certainly hurts the Justice Department's case, though perhaps not enough to compel the court to side with CREW. The Justice Department is also basing its case partly on certain exemptions from FOIA, one being Exemption 7a, which authorizes:
[T]he withholding of "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that production of such law enforcement records or information . . . could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings."
Determining the applicability of this Exemption 7 subsection thus requires a two-step analysis focusing on (1) whether a law enforcement proceeding is pending or prospective, and (2) whether release of information about it could reasonably be expected to cause some articulable harm.
So the DOJ is reasonably expecting the release of Cheney's testimony to interfere with enforcement proceedings. How? The proceedings are over. The jury convicted Scooter Libby. Obama has not so much as hinted he wants to prosecute Cheney. In fact, he has said the opposite, all while promising transparency. What articulable harm could result in releasing Cheney's interview?
FBI WATCH MAKING CRUELTY VISIBLE
to view a partial list of crimes committed by FBI agents over 1500 pages long see
http://www.forums.signonsandiego.com/showthread.php?t=59139
to view a partial list of FBI agents arrested for pedophilia see
http://www.dallasnews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3574
Day After Day...
Every day brings a new story that translates roughly into: Obama = Bush
We had hoped we were electing Bush-Lite!
I don't get it
The very people who worked their ass off to get Obama elected now want to mollify him. WTF? It makes absolutely no sense to me. Who's country is America anyway? The most significant thing about the election was that the people spoke. No matter how much we want someone to fix these big problems we have been left with, we did not elect a savior. We elected a fellow American Citizen who promised to execute the awesome responsibility of his office to the best of his ability. I am not in that chair, I do not get security briefings every day, but I do not think that the people who are presently reading them are dumb or reckless. If you don't like what you are getting so far, I say you don't fully appreciate the depth of the task at hand.
I Notice The Difference & I Call It As I See It
I do tend to notice the difference between the sales pitch and the delivered product.
I notice the difference between the promises of "accountability" and "transparency" and the Bush-like secrecy that's been delivered since the inauguration in January.
I notice the difference between the election promises to work for full and equal gay rights, and the tossing of a tiny, bare bone to an angry and disillusioned gay community this week.
President Obama, who said as a candidate that he would seek repeal of a law denying federal recognition of same-sex marriage, has angered gay rights groups with court arguments portraying the law as a nondiscriminatory measure that "preserves scarce government resources." [Scarce Government Resources?!?! Tell That One To Wall Street!!]
...
Obama called the law "abhorrent" during the presidential campaign and said he would work to overturn it. He has not presented any such legislation to Congress since taking office, however.
"We ask him to live up to his emphatic campaign promises, to stop making false and damaging legal arguments, and immediately to introduce a bill to repeal (the Defense of Marriage Act) and ensure that every married couple in America has the same access to federal benefits," the National Center for Lesbian Rights said Friday.
[Double-Speak Alert!] The Justice Department issued a statement saying Obama wants the law repealed "because it prevents LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) couples from being granted equal rights and benefits. However, until Congress passes legislation repealing the law, the administration will continue to defend the statute when it is challenged in the justice system."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/12/MND5186EV8.D...
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WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama signaled to gay-rights activists Wednesday that he's listening to their desire for greater equality in "a more perfect union." But he didn't give them even close to everything they want, bringing to the surface an anger that's been growing against the president.
...
But the president's critics — and there were many — saw the incremental move to expand gay rights as little more than pandering to a reliably Democratic voting bloc, with the primary aim not of making policy more fair but of cutting short a fundraising boycott.
"When a president tells you he's going to be different, you believe him," said John Aravosis, a Washington-based gay activist. "It's not that he didn't follow through on his promises, he stabbed us in the back."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31403699/ns/politics-white_house/
Make excuses for him if it makes you feel better about your vote, but as for myself, I intend to continue to examine his actions alongside his campaign rhetoric, and when they as far apart as they are proving to be, I intend to let him, Congress and anybody else who cares about this Nation know what I'm seeing, and what it makes me feel about MY vote. I will neither make excuses for his failure to even attempt to deliver what he sold us, nor keep silent as I see it happening, like some damned Bushie boot-licker.
And believe me, Mary Alice Walter, I have absolutely NO Desire to mollify him! Quite the Contrary!
That's what he's been trying to do to the people who elected him, their having bought into the whole "Change We Can Believe In" pitch, and then seeing the greatest apparent change being the name on the office door and the complexion of the office's occupant.
(mol·li·fy:
1: to soothe in temper or disposition : appease
2: to reduce the rigidity of : soften
3: to reduce in intensity : assuage, temper
synonyms see pacify)
Housing Scams
To stop housing scams, we must continue investigating U.S. Attorneys firing scandal.
Jacqueline
I, like many others, was heartened by the President's promise to create “an unprecedented level of openness in Government” and to “establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.” And, while the President has taken certain positive steps, so many opportunities for openness have been missed and I too, have been coming disillusioned and beginning to believe that not much will change under the current administration. All of which means we will need to remain active in using our rights under the Freedom of Information Act and working hard to defend our right to know.
Jacqueline Klosek
www.jacquelineklosek.com