More great stuff from Texas
Now comes word that the Bush Administration, trying desperately to kill the remainder of the New Deal/Great Society programs that made America great even as the elections are closing in, has hired some hack law school in Texas to devise a way to gut the Freedom of Information Act in the name of national security.
The Freedom of Information Act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966 and strengthened by Congress and President Gerald Ford in the mid-1970s. It allows anyone to request documents on almost any subject from the Federal government at modest or no cost. It has been used by countless journalists, historians, businesses and average citizens to find out what the federal government is up to. It is a crucial tool to maintaining our democracy. I used it in writing my book, Unseen Danger, about the Centralia mine fire, and again in my long-running book project on the history of GPU, the company responsible for the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.
Bush's people argue that too much information is available to the public and terrorists about the location of critical public facilities such as the TMI nuclear plant. The theory being, I guess, that being able to see the TMI nuclear plant from 10-15 miles in any direction won't be enough to give away its location to some future Osama bin Laden or Timothy MacVeigh. There have always been exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for legitimate national security information.
In fact, the "model law" envisioned by the Bush Administration would likely be used to deny scores of legitimate requests for information having nothing to do with national security. In practice, it will be used by hostile or even just overly cautious bureaucrats to deny any documents related to power plants, especially those embarassing to the nuclear industry. It is important to recall that earlier in the life of his junta, Bush directed federal agencies to use whatever means it could find under the existing FOIA law to deny requests for documents. In the past, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, the presumption had been the other way: that federal agencies should try to find reasons to release documents.
The long and sad record of softball treatment of the President by the press continued this week with the Great Leader's appearance on Larry King Live. Bush knows an interview with Fox News, where even more worshipful treatment would be likely, would carry far less credibility than knocking softballs from Larry King out of the park.