Mighty Good News From The White House Today - extremely important

[ThomWV]

I've been out today and so I was sort of surprised not to see this mentioned here, but it will be soon.

One of the little items President Obama mentioned earlier today was a directive concerning the Freedom of Information Act. To keep this short under the Bush Administration the guidance to the Agencies and Departments was that if a reason could be found not to give out information it would be withheld. The change President Obama made today was to instruct the Agencies and Departments that they are to honor and respond to Freedom of Information Act (FIOA) request unless there was a compelling national security reason not to do so. Thousands, if not tens of thousands of FIOA requests languish in the Agencies unanswered and they will now get a response.

Synopsis: President Obama had told the world, the evidence you are looking for is here and all you have to do is ask to get your very own copy of it. Have fun.

[grannie4peace]

1. makes ya proud to be american , huh ? :):)

:hi:

[roguevalley]

14. ahhhhhh. more good news. my cerebral cortex can't handle it. :)

[OregonBlue]

2. Any link or further information? Thanks.

[ThomWV]

4. I didn't get it from the net, I saw it on TV at my son's house.

[yodermon]

7. thread here

w/ link to video
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8124927&mesg_id=8124927

[Shardik]

3. That's the way I heard it.

Thanks for posting this one, Thom. K&R'd.

[BOSSHOG]

5. And to prove that its a great idea

limbaugh said today that bush did the right thing by "protecting" the executive branch. Gotta love those patriotic conservatives who want to enable criminals.

[NoSheep]

12. The sell their citizenship to the lowest bidder.

[tridim]

6. "The White House" is another Bush synonym I'm going to have to scrub from my brain

C'mon brain get with the program, Bush is gone. BUSH IS GONE!

[wryter2000]

16. It hasn't totally sunk in with me, either

I typed "Bush and his cronies" this morning and then just stared at the words. They're gone. They're really gone.

[spanone]

8. kick and recommend

[Sanity Claws]

9. What about personnel records? Litigation records?

Normally, personnel records are exempt, as are litigation records, if they are covered by the work product rule or attorney-client privilege.
I can see good reason for keeping these exemptions from FOIA, even if the reasons have nothing to do with national security.

[ThomWV]

21. There are restrictions on things like that

You can get some personnel information, not sure how much because I never had to work with it on that end. As for litigation information I believe virtually everything is available after the trial but not much before but you'd have to ask someone who knew a lot more about it than I do to find the right answer on that one.

[blm]

10. Score one for the Open Government advocates who made this an issue with Candidate Obama.

Thank you for listening PRESIDENT Obama.

[Nothing Without Hope]

11. Also drastically reduced executive privilege. Some more info and a link:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/21/15155/0396/330/687172
(snip)
... the President instructs all members of his administration to operate under principles of openness, transparency and of engaging citizens with their government. To implement these principles and make them concrete, the Memorandum on Transparency instructs three senior officials to produce an Open Government Directive within 120 days directing specific actions to implement the principles in the Memorandum. And the Memorandum on FOIA instructs the Attorney General to in that same time period issue new guidelines to the government implementing those same principles of openness and transparency in the FOIA context.
(snip)

This is only part of it. Read more, including restriction of executive privilege, at link.

[Danascot]

13. We haven't seen a post title like this since

Bush choked on a pretzel.

[wryter2000]

15. Ahhhhh, I hadn't thought of that

Somehow, I didn't realize it would apply to requests that have already been made. I guess I'm not used to things being done the way they're supposed to be.

[ThomWV]

20. Even if it didn't apply to old requests all you'd have to do is mail in another copy

And bingo, you're back in line. For whatever its worth when I worked for the Government and had to answer these things all the time we only had 10 days from the time we got the request to when we had to respond. Might still be that way.

[wordpix]

17. my outrage overload starting to reel backwards...Gobama!

[dysfunctional press]

18. ANYTHING about darth cheney's infamous energy meeting would be nice...

as well as ANYTHING pertaining to jeff gannon-guckert.

this could be loads o'fun.

[uppityperson]

19. k&r. Good for him. Am I immature if I chuckle nastily now?

[Tsiyu]

22. Honey , when that gridlock finally pushes free

there's no telling what will surface.

We'll still get only a scant clue of what the cabal has been up to, but there will be important number crunching made possible, as well as many "I told you so" revelations from this.

Smart move. Let EVERYbody in on the evidence. Strength in numeros.