Miami Herald – by MICHAEL DOYLE
In a Freedom of Information Act victory, a federal judge has slapped the Obama administration for its secretive ways and ordered officials to turn over a bland-sounding foreign policy document.
Chastising what she called “the government’s unwarranted expansion of the presidential communications privilege at the expense of the public’s interest in disclosure,” U.S. District Judge Ellen Seal Huvelle ruled the Presidential Policy Directive on Global Development is not exempt from FOIA.
Judge Huvelle’s 20-page decision took a shot or two, or three, at the Obama administration’s penchant for secrecy.
“The government appears to adopt the cavalier attitude that the President should be permitted to convey orders throughout the Executive Branch without public oversight, to engage in what is in effect governance by ‘secret law,'” Huvelle wrote.
The Center for Effective Government, formerly known as OMB Watch, filed a FOIA request in 2011 for the document. It is not classified, and has been widely distributed within executive agencies. The Obama administration nonetheless sought to keep the document to itself, claiming an executive communication privilege under FOIA.
This is an important case; as Huvelle noted, it’s the first time an administration sought to apply the executive communication privilege to an executive directive. The administration’s legal posture, Huvelle declared at various time, was “limitless” and “unbounded.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/12/18/3825370/foia-frees-another-obama-document.html#storylink=cpy
He’s not the only one who’s going to be “smacking Obama”, but the judge is only doing this because he doesn’t get secret service protection.
We may start seeing a lot of otherwise corrupt officials trying to do the right thing in an effort to save their own necks, but don’t be fooled. He may have done something decent this week, but he has a long history that we’re going to have to examine.
She!!!
Let’s hope she is not “Fuddy(ed)” for her ruling.
. . .