Birthers

In the wake of the surfacing of the bogus Obama Kenyan Birth Certificate, Josh Marshall found a way that you can get an artificial Kenyan birth certificate.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss?

Now fighting to keep White House logs secret was so last administration (and was rejected by a federal Judge). Nonetheless the same tactic the Bush/Cheney administration used, the Obama administration seems to be using.

The Obama administration is arguing that the White House visitor logs are presidential records — not Secret Service agency records, which would be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The administration ought to be able to hold secret meetings in the White House, “such as an elected official interviewing for an administration position or an ambassador coming for a discussion on issues that would affect international negotiations,” said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt.

These same arguments, made by the Bush administration, were rejected twice by a federal judge. The visitor logs are created by the Secret Service and maintained by the Secret Service, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled in 2007 and again this January. CREW had requested records of visits to the Bush White House, as well as the residence of Vice President Dick Cheney, by leaders of Religious Right organizations.

Where is the change that I can believe in regarding this policy? Barack Obama ran a campaign that galvanized the American people by promising an era where the U.S moral position in the world would be improved and that government would be more transparent. Now we learn that between and John Yoo in a torture lawsuit, and now this, their is little hope and no audacity.

Obama Era Secrecy?????

Countless times I have knocked the secrecy and closed government policies of the Bush/Cheney administration as counter to democracy and foolish since a functioning democratic republic relies primary on a people fluent and well-informed with the intricacies of the mechanisms and powers of the institutions that serve as the structure of most of our societies. So when this happens within the four month old Obama administration it to is worthy of condemnation, especially since Obama railed against closed government polices that are a chief hallmark of the old regime.

Throughout the course of both the Democratic primaries and the general election Obama vowed an era of transparency that would put an end to such shameful practices. Well he has come through on such things as a presumption of disclosure in FOIA requests and the release of the torture memos, there is at least one office that like in the Bush/Cheney administration, is exempt from the Obama era transparency. Its now time for him to live up to his promises. After all the American people in a resounding referendum in November sent a message, they want unnecessary secrecy in government to end. Its that secrecy that those in power cling to that got us into this mess. Whether it be regarding the economy, Iraq, or the deterioration of America’s promise in the eyes of many overseas, as well as the demoralizing of American spirit here at home.

ABC News:

A sweeping new Obama administration openness policy doesn’t apply to a key White House office that supports most of Obama’s key staff and advisers, administration officials confirm. Rather, the Obama White House has opted to retain a Bush-era policy that blocks information about those operations from public release.

Just weeks after taking office, the Obama administration adopted an unprecedented policy of sunlight, directing bureaucrats across government to “apply a presumption of openness” regarding the release of documents to the public, according to a memo by Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder.

But in keeping with his predecessor’s position, Obama’s policy does not cover an important part of the White House: the Office of Administration, which oversees much of the day-to-day functions of the president’s own office and staff.

In 2007, then-president George W. Bush, whose penchant for secrecy was a reliable villain in Obama’s campaign speeches, became the first president to declare the White House Office of Administration off-limits to public inquiries. At the time, Bush was engaged in a heated court battle with good government groups over access to information about a massive batch of missing White House e-mails.

A federal court ruled in favor of the Bush administration, agreeing that the office was not technically an “agency” as defined by FOIA, and was not required to abide by the openness law.

Court Rules Against State Secrets

A bit of good news. Earlier this week it was revealed that those NSA wiretaps that Bush/Cheney told us were only used to monitor terrorists, were surprise, more widely employed then previously acknowledged; amassing huge amounts of data on phone conversations and e-mails of both Foreign and American conversations. Even spying on an unnamed member of congress.

Last Summer the Bush/Cheney administration as well as their party Aron boys in the congress along with many Democrats (including then Senator and Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama) supported. It renewed a version of FISA that was much more lax and granted many telecom companies who used this retroactive immunity. Many civil liberties activists opposed the decision, but many of those including Obama said those who were wronged by any surveillance or had their phone records seized wrongly could always file a law suit.

Well earlier this week the administration said people couldn’t even do that. But according to Marc Ambinder, a new court ruling could knock down the Obama administration’s rationale.

The Obama administration suffered a bit of a legal setback this afternoon: a federal judge in California rejected the administration’s assertion of the state secrets privilege in the civil suit brought by an Islamic charity that was allegedly subjected to illegal NSA surveillance. The order, in Al-Haramain v. Bush, requires the government to come up with a way to safeguard the classified information it plans to present in the NSA’s defense by May 8. Judge Vaughn Walker noted that the government has elsewhere made provisions for the discussion of Top Secret/SCI information. It so happens that the plaintiffs attorneys have been cleared to that level. Walker crafted his order narrowly to prevent the government from appealing it immediately to the Ninth Circuit. On May 8, it will be interesting to see whether the administration presents a plan for safeguarding classified info — or whether it re-asserts the state secrets privilege.

By the way now that the Right wing who supported many of these secretive and surveillance measures all along now that they feel they have been wrongly targeted, it would be nice if they could actually stand up against these policies no matter who exercises them. I mean its not like they were screaming from the rooftops with outrage, when the Department of Homeland Security, watched Quakers or peace protesters making Peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches as threats. Somehow they forgot that they wouldn’t always be in power and that each President’s policies and decisions set precident.

Dick Cheney Sought to Undermine Obama

Another piece about Dick Cheney and how he cared more about himself and his neoconservative ideology then the principles of his country.

Between November of 2008 and President Obama’s inauguration on January 20, as Israel had been bombing Gaza in response to terrorist attacks, Cheney instead of acting the part of a competent distinguished statesman, in perfect consistency with his manner of business chose to demonize his political rivals and stock fears amongst the Israeli people, rather then find a sustainable solution that would lessen the bloodshed on both sides. Luckily Obama who was pushing for a ceasefire in the fighting between Israel and elements in Gaza, but that is no thanks to Cheney, who derided Obama to foreign leaders.

The Obama transition team also helped persuade Israel to end the bombing of Gaza and to withdraw its ground troops before the Inauguration. According to the former senior intelligence official, who has access to sensitive information, “Cheney began getting messages from the Israelis about pressure from Obama” when he was President-elect. Cheney, who worked closely with the Israeli leadership in the lead-up to the Gaza war, portrayed Obama to the Israelis as a “pro-Palestinian,” who would not support their efforts (and, in private, disparaged Obama, referring to him at one point as someone who would “never make it in the major leagues”).

Guess he didn’t think he defamed and desecrated this country enough when he did this kind of thing at home.

Cheney over the course of eight years has amassed and abused great powers, cut the government off from those it is charged with serving, advocated inhuman methods of treatment of people as he pushed for Maoist “interrogation techniques” that yielded no information of value, insulted our allies, invaded a country under false pretenses, acted as an impediment to rather then an instrument of peace and good will at every turn, and whose office tried to humiliate an ambassador by exposing his wife’s identity as a CIA agent and thus placing this country in greater danger. And that is not even counting the things such as sanctions on apartheid in South Africa back in the 1980s, which Cheney was against as a Congressman. Dick Cheney’s approval thus would something that no American president, humane person, or decent country should want or get.

One of the great traditions in our country going back to George Washington’s departure from office in 1797 until now evidently we have had the peaceful transfer of power, unimpeded by partisan rancor,vituperation, or self interest. Cheney, in his typical fashion it is alleged., disposed of that great tradition as well.

Obama Defends Bush/Cheney in Call for E-mail Release

When Obama took office, it looked like a new era of post Bush/Cheney open effective government that respects the knowledge and wisdom of the people would begin, with such measures as restoring a policy of disclosure when it comes to FOIA. But that might not be the case.

The Obama Justice Department is now blocking a suit that would force the Bush/Cheney administration to release e-mails that were supposed to be saved, something that in true fashion they refused to do in their garrison mentality. Obama has no real reason to defend such practices. This is many things, but it certainly isn’t change that I can believe in.

Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.

Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush’s eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama’s Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration’s bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.

During its first term, the Bush White House failed to install electronic record-keeping for e-mail when it switched to a new system, resulting in millions of messages that could not be found.

The Bush White House discovered the problem in 2005 and rejected a proposed solution.

Recently, the Bush White House said it had located 14 million e-mails that were misplaced and that the White House had restored hundreds of thousands of other e-mails from computer backup tapes.

The steps the White House took are inadequate, one of the two groups, the National Security Archive, told a federal judge in court papers filed Friday.

“We do not know how many more e-mails could be restored but have not been, because defendants have not looked,” the National Security Archive said in the court papers.

“The new administration seems no more eager than the last” to deal with the issue, said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the other group that sued the EOP.

How can we be an effective government if every request for information and forthrightness is met with denial followed by a “Just trust us”? There are eight years of government policies that the people and the press have been kept in the dark about. The only way we can move forward is to know what has been done in the past eight years, otherwise we will never get out of the tangle we are in as a country.

FOIA is Back: Now That is Change I Can Believe In

Aside from the seemingly idiotic decision to exempt a former Retheon lobbyist and nominee to be Assiatant Secretary of Defense from the new Obama ethics rules, Obama has by and large done a good job restoring ethics to government and refashioning America’s image from the ruins of the Bush/Cheney era, especially through some of his first executive orders.

The closure of Guantanamo Bay, the banning of torture (“harsh interrogation techniques), and closing of CIA black sites have been the more high profile acts. Obama has also done something though consistent both with the desires of our founding fathers to have a well informed public, and his own repeated expressed desire to get the public more involved in government and accountability, and that dramatically reverses some of the largest barriers erected by the Bush/Cheney administration to keep journalists, the legislative branch, attorneys, scholars, and the American people divorced from the information that informs the public of the workings of the governed.

Here is just one that relates to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that was created in 1966, a mechanism that would allow scholars, the press, and others the information to get government documents from various agencies. Under Bush/Cheney documents would be handled under a presumption of secrecy; meaning unless they were forced to release it they would assume that it was to be kept secret. Well President Obama has reversed that rule stating that his administration and government agencies will handle the release of documents with a presumption of disclosure. Meaning that according to this act the days of keeping documents away from the public purely for the sake of shielding themselves from public scrutiny, political embarrassment, excessive reclassification, or secrecy for secrecy’s sake are over.

Here is the first part of the text of that order:

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT: Freedom of Information Act

A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which encourages accountability through transparency, is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government. At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the Government and the citizenry alike.

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.

All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.

The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.

More>>>

Now I know many will retort by saying that this will force the government to disclose information that could be vital to National security and that could be dangerous during the war on terror, however I would imagine the neoconservatives now out of power won’t be saying that. But the Freedom of Information Act has several categories of information, including National security, that are exempted from being released under FOIA.

Obama is also reversing portions of the Bush/Cheney administration Presidential Records Act that allowed a President to keep large amounts of Presidential and Vice Presidential records from being accessed by the public.

Now I have never requested such information, but as an aspiring journalist I know that a well informed public and press makes for a well functioning and ethical government. That was always one thing I hated most of all about the Bush/Cheney administration, they spent more time intimidating political and partisan opponents,journalists, and everyone else, with a garrison mindset that the public were not their masters but their enemies that the public became disengaged, uninformed, and I firmly believe in part got us in the malaise and disaster we find our selves trying to get out of today.

Larry King Says His young son wishes that He Was Black

Weird, yet profound. Larry King is said to have recently forecasted that within ten years we will have a U.S President that is not only a woman but is a lesbian ( right wing conservative scream here), and now King discloses that his son wants to be black.

Interviewing a visibly uncomfortable Bob Woodward on his eponymous CNN show last night, Larry, 75, gushed: “My younger son Cannon, he is eight. And he now says that he would like to be black. I’m not kidding. He said there’s a lot of advantages. Black is in. Is this a turning of the tide?”

Well the statement certainly invites laughter or at least a smile at first glance. But although there still remains a great many disparities in terms of income and race between whites and other ethnic minorities and they will no doubt remain, as everyone has said almost non-stop, the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency is a testament to how much progress we made. Think about it, less than two centuries ago, African-Americans were not viewed as Americans, in fact they were treated under law and under the rules of society as property, inanimate objects often battered by their masters and white counterparts. Even as much as 40 years ago vestiges of segregation remained strong not only in the south, but even in Northern parts of the country. Seriously could anyone honestly say or feel 200 years ago, forty years ago, or even 20 years after seeing the inequalities, savageries, and hardship visited upon an African-American that they didn’t even respect much less want to be?

Barack and Buntology

My friend and fellow WSC student and blogger Angela Bunt and her sister Jackie were two of the lucky Westfield State students to head down to Washington DC for the Obama inauguration. You may know Angela and Jackie from their phenomenal blog buntology.com. They are even cited on this report on a local CBS 3 Newscast.

In other news of technology and politics, early Obama supporter Senator Claire McCaskill(D-MO)twitters the inauguration. Strange!

Some Thoughts on the Transition of Power

Picture from the Associated Press.

Well its official as of today at noon Eastern time, Barack H Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States and Joesph R Biden Jr as the new Vice President of the United States, amidst the blustery chill of January, the roar of millions that stretched from the pearly white broad staircase of the nation’s capitol to the monument that bares the name of America’s father George Washington, as well as the watchful eyes and ears of the world. His Inagural address was eloquent as always and meant to call Americans to action in a time of economic hardship, war, and low national confidence; as well as extend a hand to all corners of the world.

His predecessor the now former President George W Bush now leaves office according to Gallup polling with some of the lowest numbers of any President in the history of public polling,leaving behind a nation’s spirit and economy in devastating shape. Bush’s few remaining supporters (such as JR Dunn at the so-called “American Thinker”) that are sparse in terms of numbers even in Bush’s own party,scorn his critics and make him out to be a saint, a martyr to the cause of neoconservatism. Because after eight years of rapidly growing executive authority, secrecy, cover-ups, patronage, a war based on a faulty justification and distorted intelligence, a prominent city once rich with culture known as New Orleans, an economic implosion, a disdain for the public, and the casual use of torture and illegal means done under the auspices of protecting the so-called homeland; why be so angry?

In the end Bush has not met the measure of a great President and has met all the measures of a disaster; he has left the public and the system in government poorer, more demoralized, and more decimated than when he ascended to that high office and history and the world at least in the short term will look upon him unkindly.

On the opposite side, Barack Obama is now entering office with one of the highest levels of popularity of nearly any President in the History of polling, with many challenges to surmount and a series of national and global crises awaiting him. Does this mean he will be a great President, or that he won’t make errors or possibly have his own share of petty and sordid dealings? No. Polling numbers are just that and are not always accurate in painting the more complex feelings and climate of the American public and anything can happen once a new leader takes power. But at least following eight years we have a chance to at least function as a Government that full fills instead of shirks its global obligations and the business of those who the constitution and government serve; We the People.