An "era" used to last, but not so much anymore. We've already heard GOP
Chairman Michael Steele proclaim that "the era of apologizing for
Republican mistakes" was over (when many of us didn't know it had begun), and now it appears that Barack Obama's era of openness has closed, too.
Yesterday, there was a potentially temporary though still quite
significant victory for those who believe in open government and
transparency: as Jane Hamsher first reported, House leaders and the White House were forced to remove the Graham-Lieberman photo suppression amendment
from the war supplemental spending bill, because widespread opposition
to that amendment among progressive H
Headline in the May 2 New York Times: "Murtha's Nephew Named a Lobbyist for Marines." Headline just three days later in the May 5 Washington Post: "Murtha's Nephew Got Defense Contracts."
We are being robbed big-time, but you
can't say we haven't been warned. Not after the release Tuesday of a
scathing report by the Treasury Department's special inspector general,
who charged that the aptly named Troubled Asset Relief Fund bailout
program is rife with mismanagement and potential for fraud. The IG's
office already has opened 20 criminal fraud investigations into the
$700 billion program, which is now well on its way to a $3 trillion
obligation, and the IG predicts many more are coming.
For an administration flamboyantly vowing new levels of
transparency, the Obama White House continuously relies upon one of the
most un-transparent political weapons: namely, disseminating to the
public -- typically through sympathetic journalists -- purely
pro-administration assertions while hiding behind a journalistically
baseless grant of anonymity. There are numerous manipulative and
distorting effects from having government officials make pronouncements
while remaining anonymous, one of the most significant of which is that
there is no accountability whatsoever when they m
WASHINGTON - A coalition of liberal bloggers and activists backed by organized labor announced a campaign Thursday to pressure Democrats to move to the left by financing challenges to centrist members of Congress.
The group, which calls itself Accountability Now, plans to raise money online and recruit liberal candidates to run in the primaries against Democratic incumbents it considers out of step with constituents.
WASHINGTON - House and Senate committees yesterday introduced bills that would sharply curtail the government's use of the "state secrets" privilege, a policy used by President Bush to argue that a lawsuit involving allegations of torture should be dismissed - and a position that the Obama administration has now adopted.
WASHINGTON - Even as Americans struggle with two wars and an economy in tatters, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds majorities in favor of investigating some of the thorniest unfinished business from the Bush administration: Whether its tactics in the "war on terror" broke the law.
Earlier this week, I wrote about the State Secrets Protection Act of 2008,
which was co-sponsored by numerous key Senators [including Joe Biden
and Hillary Clinton, as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee's Chair
(Pat Leahy) and ranking member (Arlen Specter)], and which was approved
by the Judiciary Committee last year with all Democrats voting in favor.
US defence officials are preventing Barack Obama from seeing evidence that a former British resident held in Guantánamo Bay
has been tortured, the prisoner's lawyer said last night, as
campaigners and the Foreign Office prepared for the man's release in as
little as a week.
Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal
charity Reprieve, which represents Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, sent
Obama evidence of what he called "truly mediaeval" abuse but
substantial parts were blanked out so the president could not read it.
