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How Is Obama Doing On Open Government?
An anonymous reader writes "OMB Watch today published an in-depth analysis of the Obama administration's progress on a wide-ranging set of open government recommendations. Key findings of the report include strong and consistent leadership from the White House on government openness and meaningful utilization of e-government and Web 2.0 technologies. But there has been no high-level effort to improve electronic records management and preservation, and the implementation of improved Freedom of Information Act policies has lagged."
That's a trick question, right? Like asking if you've stopped beating your wife?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank. " - Barack Obama, October 27, 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr9ywEFRQkQ
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/barely-half-of-agencies-meeting-obamas-foia-request-goals-study-says/2011/03/11/ABImgsT_story.html
Though 49(of 90) agencies and departments complied with the study’s authors, 17 others — including the Transportation Department and U.S. Postal Service — provided no documents and two withheld information. Another 17 agencies — including the departments of Commerce, Energy, Justice and State — provided no final response, and four smaller agencies never acknowledged receipt of the FOIA request. The figures have improved significantly from last year, when just 13 of 90 agencies complied.
“At this rate, it’ll be the end of his term before the agencies do what Obama asked them to do on the first day,” said Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive.
You don't do this over a private.
You do it over rule of law, rules of evidence, and principles that were established as the fundamental basis of legitimate government - in tradition and precedent that goes back to at least the thirteenth century.
Again, you forgot to use the word "allegedly", to modify the second verb in your final sentence.
If this criticism seems irrelevant or incomprehensible to you? Then it is no wonder you have a nation falle to such a sorry state.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
How Is Obama Doing On Open Government? - About like he's doing on all his other promises - bringing the troops home, closing Gitmo, etc. etc. Why we ever elected a hope-peddling amateur and expected any different I'll never know. Especially during such a precarious time in our nation's history. Maybe I'm wrong and Wall Street, Egypt, Japan and Lybia really do need their own 'community organizers' to solve their woes.
Big on words, implementation "lagging"
And that would be Obama in a nut shell. Makes excellent speeches (as long as he doesn't have to talk off the cuff), and does things that only some people want, totally fails on the ones everyone would like.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Well -- I haven't seen a coherent argument that he should not be prosecuted, given what he's supposed to have done. I'm open to persuasion, but it seems to me that as long as he's given a fair chance to defend himself (including being detained under reasonable conditions), he *should* face trial.
Right off the bat I'll grant you the "Collateral Murder" video. I don't think Wikileak's spin on those tapes is fair or accurate, but I'll grant that atrocities *do* happen and that a reasonable person looking at the video might conclude that's what it showed. It's at least defensible to go public with that tape, given the assumption that the Army has no safe and effective mechanism for dealing with these matters.
The diplomatic cables and the Afghan war documents are a different matter. I don't think these turned out to be as damaging as Manning's more hysterical detractors claim, but I still think Manning did something wrong. He took a huge body of data, more than he could possibly have understood in detail himself, then he sent him to somebody he didn't actually know so that person could go on a fishing expedition. That was grossly irresponsible.
If he had a piece of information in his hands that he was familiar with and he thought it was something that the public ought to know, then I'd call him a whistle-blower and I'd support him. But teams of expert reporters took months to comb through the mountains of random stuff he leaked, just to figure what was there. Manning could not possibly have known what he setting in motion, and he must have known that. Until I learn otherwise, I'd call him a chaos-monger, not a whistle-blower.
The question isn't whether good things happened as the result of what Manning did, although I do think some good things have happened. And to my knowledge there's no documented evidence of any serious, irreparable harm resulting. But Manning's actions were unconscionably reckless, and a violation of a professional trust. I believe the Manning case shows we probably can afford to be a lot more open with information than we are, and that's a positive outcome. But a serious potential for harm to innocent third parties was there and Manning took no steps to prevent that. Even where some parties deserve exposure for being, as Assange calls them, "collaborators", the same principle of justice applies to them as to Manning. They deserve a fair chance to defend themselves before they are punished.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Manning is a fucking traitor, nothing less. What else do you call someone who steals secret documents and gives to someone who is not supposed to have them?
And don't give me that bullshit about how he wanted to release data that shouldn't have been secret. Thousands of documents were released and I can promise you that Manning did not read them all.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
So, in other words you think we were wrong at Nuremberg when we prosecuted all those Nazis for following orders? You can't have it both ways, there were war crimes committed by American personnel and it went to the top, that's just with things we knew about previously, now we have a lot more evidence with which to open war crimes proceedings at the Hague for the other stuff that we didn't know about.
Manning is an alleged fucking traitor. Just because some dude pointed a finger at him, does not make him a convicted traitor. Once he is convicted (by the military court, I assume?), you may call him a traitor.
If you read the parent post (re-read it), you would notice that he is not arguing that Manning is a good guy. He is saying that no matter what he is (even when he is most likely convicted), our constitution does not allow for cruel and unusual punishment that is being inflicted on Manning (read the details in the news). Once he is convicted he should go to a regular jail, traitor or not. Unless he is given a death penalty, in which case he might be executed.
But what is happening now to him is presumably unconstitutional as there is no option that allows his current treatment. Not even if Manning is convicted of every crime he is accused of and a few more will regular abuse be an acceptable punishment.