Apparently This Is Sunshine Week

"The American people want to trust in our government again – we just need a government that will trust in us. And making government accountable to the people isn't just a cause of this campaign – it's been a cause of my life for two decades." – Barack Obama, September 4, 2007

  Chicago Sun Times

President Barack Obama’s defense to Democratic senators complaining about how little his administration has told Congress about the legal justifications for his drone policy: Dick Cheney was worse.

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“This is not Dick Cheney we’re talking about here,” he said.

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The president noted that he would have “probably objected” over the White House’s handling of this issue if he were still a senator.

  Politico

But he's a king now, so tough shit lowlifes.

“What happened over the last couple of weeks is a threat, is a threat to trust between us and you, us towards you and you towards us,” [West Virginia Democratic Senator Jay] Rockefeller told [newly seated CIA Director John] Brennan and other administration witnesses. “What basically happened was that we were given certain things which we requested, primarily because [Brennan was] up for confirmation….Had we not been given those things, some of those things which we requested, the confirmation would not have had the votes.” Rockefeller also charged that after Brennan was confirmed, the administration clammed up again and “went directly back to the way they were from 2001-2 to 2007.”

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As for the legal memos shared after two years of requests, Rockefeller said there was “nothing in them which is a threat to anybody.” He also complained bitterly about the administration initially denying Senate staffers cleared to see highly classified information access to the memos and about someone sent in to watch him and an aide when they finally got to look at some of the documents in a secure room.

“There was a minder who was sent in. I was unaware that that person was going to have to be there. It was an insult to me,” Rockefeller said. “And I kicked the person out. He said, ‘My orders are I have to be here. And I said something else.’”

He apparently made his feelings known to Obama directly later. Too bad he's just a lowly senator and not a king, like Obama. Also, too bad we don't have a transcript of THAT conversation.

”Every time I asked the question of various people, the attorney general, the president and others, it’s always somebody else’s department,” [Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Democrat Patrick] Leahy said.

Just this week, the Associated Press conducted a study proving that last year, the Obama administration has rejected more FOIA requests on national security grounds than in any year since Obama became president, and quoted Alexander Abdo, an ACLU staff attorney for its national security project, as follows:

"We've seen a meteoric rise in the number of claims to protect secret law, the government's interpretations of laws or its understanding of its own authority. In some ways, the Obama administration is actually even more aggressive on secrecy than the Bush administration."

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Right this very minute, on the White House website, Obama is quoted this way: "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government" because "transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing."

The White House blog on Wednesday said that "we celebrate Sunshine Week - an appropriate time to discuss the importance of open government and freedom of information"

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Along with others, I've spent the last four years documenting the extreme, often unprecedented, commitment to secrecy that this president has exhibited, including his vindictive war on whistleblowers, his refusal to disclose even the legal principles underpinning his claimed war powers of assassination, and his unrelenting, Bush-copying invocation of secrecy privileges to prevent courts even from deciding the legality of his conduct.

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Thomas Jefferson wrote in an 1804 letter to John Tyler: "Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."

  Glenn Greenwald

The law that directs our government’s activities should not be kept secret.

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[The] White House is still bobbing and weaving on whether to share with Congress the legal opinions and memorandums governing targeted killing, which include the legal justification for killing U.S. citizens without trial.

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In refusing to release to Congress the rules and justifications governing a program that has conducted nearly 400 unmanned drone strikes and killed at least three Americans in the past four years, President Obama is ignoring the system of checks and balances that has governed our country from its earliest days. And in keeping this information from the American people, he is undermining the nation’s ability to be a leader on the world stage and is acting in opposition to the democratic principles we hold most important.

This is why I say, respectfully: Give them up, Mr. President.

  WaPo, John Podesta, former Clinton chief of staff

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.