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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."
"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
Thats the DoD, the President isn't going to push on them over a Private.
Manning is done, he was done the second he sent files to a third party.
I'm not sure. Let me ask him whether or not the NSA ran a warrantless-wiretapping operation at AT&T, and whether or not the CIA ferried people to other countries for torture. Someone dedicated to openness would undoubtedly answer that question clearly and unambiguously, right?
you've stopped beating your wife?
We don't have the time to play Settlers of Catan these days, so yes.
Big on words, implementation "lagging"
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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..."
Gitmo is still open so that counts right?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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.
Obama did not realize even one of his important promises - Guantanamo still exists, health service is not better, not even the tax gifts to the super-rich from Bush were taken back, next to all the other things. That man is just a living disappointment, despite being the lesser of the possible evils.
So, what are all those tsars doing anyway?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
implementation of improved Freedom of Information Act policies has lagged
That's all we needed to know.
It would be a violation of Private Manning's rights for the military to reveal enough about the way it is treating him to disprove the allegations. This sort of thing happens frequently. Someone makes an allegation of mistreatment against an organization that is forbidden by statute from commenting on the situation, then people say, "Well, if the allegations are baseless, why don't they tell us what is really going on?". The answer to that question is that the law specifically forbids them from doing so.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
That's idiotic. Forward progress IS budget cuts. What fucking kind of budget do you work with where it's considered PROGRESS because you saved less and spent more? Progress would be having the balls to tell all these whiny bitches to fuck off when you have to cut their programs. Everyone has a special interest and pet program so if you cut things, someone's always going to be pissed. But that's the price you have to pay so that you don't have to pay the price. Pissing off a few whiny twats seems worth it to avoid being a trillion dollars over budget and 15 trillion in deficit.
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.
Bradley Manning did not give those documents to someone who is not supposed to have them.
He gave them to us. Remember us? We the people? You may not have heard about us very much recently, given all of the things going on that are too important to hear about. But we're still here, and theoretically, all those important people in the government work for us.
Perhaps Manning was excessively honest with his superiors (who are, if you'll recall, us.) But excessive honesty to one's superiors is generally not considered an offense worthy of torture in the civilized world. It is often considered heroism.
Actually, Manning gave them to a Foreign National.
And all your clever (?) rhetoric won't obscure the fact that he was part of a military organization that was under an oath to behave in a certain fashion. And don't get all Godwinny about it. If you do, you're full of shit and YHL.
But don't take my word for, listen to the several dozen civic organizations that filed a protest, listen to Senator Whyden, whose excellent letter to USTR went unanswered. Listen to Canadian law professor Michael Geist. Listen to Knowledge Ecology, whose FOIA request the Obama Administration denied on "national security" grounds.
Knowledge Ecology ACTA News: http://keionline.org/taxonomy/term/95
Knowledge Ecology ACTA timeline: http://keionline.org/node/991
Michael Geist: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_tags&task=view&tag=acta&Itemid=408