Court Orders White House to Disclose Telecom Ties

rgiskard01 writes "Glenn Greenwald is reporting at Salon.com on a win for the EFF, in the battle for clarity regarding the telecom surveillance scandal. A federal judge ordered the Bush administration yesterday to accede to the EFF's Freedom of Information Act request. Assuming the White House follows the court order, they would have to make public their lobbying ties to the telecoms industry. 'These disclosures will reveal ... which members of Congress McConnell and other Bush officials privately lobbied. As an argument of last resort, the administration even proposed disclosing these documents on December 31 so that -- as EFF pointed out -- the information would be available only after Congress passed the new FISA bill. The court rejected every administration claim as to why it should not have to disclose these records.'" Greenwald goes on to argue that the order should be leveled against Senators as well, to get a sense of who else is in Ma Bell's pocket.

Comments

Re:constituents

[FunWithKnives]

Hillary Clinton is about as far from a socialist as possible. I have no idea why people trumpet this baseless notion. She is part of the capitalist status-quo, just as the rest of the "popular" candidates are. Her proposed "health care" plan, which is the only part of her platform that I imagine one could even attempt to call "socialistic" (though all of the main candidates have or will have something similar), would do absolutely nothing to combat the broken private system. True socialist change would involve placing the health insurance and pharmaceutical giants under public ownership, where they would be conducted as a public trust under democratic control of the workers. That is socialism. Creating a "safety net" or a "welfare state" is not socialism. Those are simply policies meant to keep the populace complacent, nothing more.

Also, I believe that if she were truly socialist, she would receive much less than she does in "campaign contributions" (read: legalized bribes) from corporations. Anecdotally, regarding her "health care" plan, if it would really make any profound difference in the current system, then why is she currently the number one recipient of contributions from both the HMO Industry and the Health Professionals Industry for the 2007-2008 election cycle?