Corleone-Style Government
This is pretty amazing -- a FOIA and a subsequent string of emails between a USA Today reporter and the Department of Justice. Like any email string, you need to go to the end and then read up. Essentially, the DOJ tells the reporter that they have information that undermines the reporter's story but won't tell him what it is. Instead, they threaten to hold it until after the reporter has published, and then give the information to another media outlet in order to embarrass the reporter, all because the reporter is "biased" which in Obama Administration speak means that he is an outlier that does not dutifully fall in line with the Administration's talking points.
My guess is that this is a cheap bluff to prevent a story from being published that the DOJ does not want to see in the public domain. Even if it is not a bluff, this is a horrendous approach to releasing information to the public.
HenryBowman419:
Pretty standard for Chicago politicians (and everyone in the Obama Admin is a politician). Actually, rather tame compared to what might be done to the USA fellow -- of course, such bad things might just happen, anyway.
September 19, 2013, 11:42 amkidmugsy:
"he is an outlier": they'd prefer that he was an outright liar.
September 19, 2013, 12:29 pmJames:
Well if this administration were any more transparent, it would be labeled the lead curtain.
September 19, 2013, 12:34 pmDaublin:
It's a real problem in general. For a reporter to get access to an individual, they have to write relatively friendly things about said individual. As such, you have lots of reporters who spin things however their sources ask them to. Nobody wants to have lunch with a reporter you don't trust to say nice things about you.
September 19, 2013, 1:02 pmSam L.:
Print it with the caveat that the DOJ says "I'm wrong, won't tell me why, and did tell me they will tell another paper/tv station why/how I'm wrong if we publish. And this IS "The Most Transparent Administration Evah!" "
September 19, 2013, 1:16 pmmarque2:
Like being in a car that suddenly careens out of control then bursts into flames.
Oh no nothing to see here - it was the meth.
September 19, 2013, 5:04 pmJW:
What a good little toady, drunk with power, Brad Heath is.
Yeah, this administration is transparent alright, just not in the way they described it.
September 19, 2013, 8:09 pmirandom419:
I'll never understand the need for a FOIA in the age of the internet. They should have to dump all information weekly on the web.
September 20, 2013, 6:43 am