Big Brother - Give 'em The Old Razzle Dazzle

On New Years Eve 2007, Krazy King George signed The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, toughening the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The legislation was unanimously passed by the House and Senate and designed ensure federal agencies to respond more quickly to records requests.

Krazy King George gave a fairly luke warm reception to the bill when signing it:

For example, the bill holds members of the Senate and Executive Branch employees to a much higher standard of conduct than members of the House. The specific bill language is confusing, and I believe these increased restrictions would have a negative impact on recruitment and retention of federal employees. I urge the Congress to make these standards more uniform and less confusing and to do so in a way that will not discourage public service.

In addition, this bill would have the effect of unreasonably burdening sitting President's and Vice President's reelection campaigns. I look forward to working with Congress to amend these provisions to provide a reasonable process for allocating the cost of Presidential and Vice Presidential campaign travel that is consistent with security needs.

I am pleased that the Congress has begun to make progress in bringing greater transparency to the earmarking process. However, this bill falls far short of the reform that American taxpayers deserve. I am concerned that there are potential loopholes in some of the earmark reforms included in this bill that would allow earmarks to escape sufficient scrutiny. This legislation also does not address other earmark reforms I have called on Congress to implement, such as ending the practice of putting earmarks in report language.

I thank Members of both parties who worked on this legislation, and look forward to working with the Congress to further advance ethics, lobbying, and earmark reform.

Well, King George really didn’t like it, but decided in the face of a certain veto override he would just go ahead and sign it, since he would just neuter it later anyhow.

Let’s move the funds for the Office of Government Information Services  to the Department of Justice”, removing it from the National Archives. Oh and then we will just forget to actually establish the new office at DOJ.

            Congress Daly reports:

“But by shifting the funding to the Justice Department, OMB would effectively eliminate the office, because it appears no similar operation would be created there,” according to an aide to Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT). […]

National Archives officials are relatively independent of political pressure, the staffer explained, “but DOJ is different.” Government transparency advocates consider the department hostile to efforts to improve FOIA responsiveness, in part because it represents agencies sued by FOIA requesters.