Guard tells Senator Boxer that she can't take notes on TPP

[pampango]

39. Congress did not have access to FDR's trade negotiations nor Obama's Iranian negotiations.

If liberals want international issues solved diplomatically, we are going to have to accept an amount of secrecy as diplomats go about that. The alternative of no diplomacy - just let countries do whatever they want to whomever they want is not very appealing. I would love to see Woodrow Wilson's idea of "open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view" implemented but I don't see that on the horizon.

Do legislators in Canada, Australia, Mexico, Japan and the other TPP countries have unrestricted access to the negotiations? If so, ours should too. If not, perhaps there was an agreement between the countries at the beginning to that effect (as was the case with FDR in trade talks and Obama in Iranian talks). It would be hard to go back on our word (if it was given) and say "We know what we all agreed on confidentiality at the beginning of the negotiations, but we have changed our minds. Sorry about that. But we do hope to solve future issues with you diplomatically."