Mother Jones magazine's Daily MoJo shines a bright light on an administration that loves to do things in the dark--as in keeping the congress and the American people in the dark about what it is doing with our money and our military. It is flat-out frightening, and you must read it:
The U.S. Constitution was originally designed to promote transparency in government, as Elaine Scarry reminds us in a recent essay on the USA Patriot Act. True, there has always been a lively debate over the need to balance national security with an open government, but the presumption has usually been in favor of openness. At least, until now. Under the Bush administration, secrecy has become standard fare, and most of it has very little to do with national security. The administration has withheld information from Congress, stonewalled public access to federal records, and embarked on a classification spree, often for the sake of petty politics. It's not exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind.
The administration's penchant for silence, secrets, and cover-ups has been thoroughly documented in a new report, entitled "Secrecy in the Bush Administration", put out by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) from the House Committee on Government Reform. The report finds a "consistent pattern" in the Bush Administration's actions: "laws that are designed to promote access to public information have been undermined, while laws that authorize the government to withhold information or operate in secrecy have repeatedly been expanded." It's a reminder of how far we've traveled from the Constitution's original intent.
There are a great deal of important revelations--with links--which you will want to continuing reading about at the: Daily MoJo
