The Obama Administration began with lofty promises of being "the most transparent administration in history." Instead it ended up setting a record, by the Associated Press's count, for denying the most Freedom of Information Act requests. -Grabien News 
The White House showed “bad faith” in how it handled an open records request for global warming data, a federal court ruled Monday, issuing yet another stinging rebuke to the administration for showing a lack of transparency.
For President Obama, who vowed to run the most transparent government in U.S. history, Judge Amit P. Mehta’s ruling granting legal discovery in an open records case — the third time this year a judge has ordered discovery — is an embarrassing black eye. -Stephen Dinan
Obamacare Architect: "Lack Of Transparency Is A Huge Political Advantage"
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Obama, Financial, Justice, Law, Debt
The Obama administration in its final year in office spent a record $36.2 million on legal costs defending its refusal to turn over federal records under the Freedom of Information Act, according to an Associated Press analysis of new U.S. data that also showed poor performance in other categories measuring transparency in government. For a second consecutive year, the Obama administration set a record for times federal employees told citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn’t find a single page of files that were requested.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Government, Obama, Oops, Bigbrother
The Obama administration set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.
The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn’t find documents and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy. It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Obama, Character, Bigbrother
The IRS used a “wholly separate” instant messaging system that automatically deleted office communications, according to documentation released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday. The system appears to have been purposefully used by agency officials responsible for the targeting of conservative non-profits, in order to evade public scrutiny.
The system, known as “Office Communication Server” or OCS was used by IRS officials, including many in the Exempt Organizations (EO) Unit, which was headed by Lois Lerner. As the Oversight Committee report states, the instant messaging system did not archive any communications, so it is not possible to know what employees of the EO unit discussed on it.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Government, Obama, Oops, Bigbrother
For the second consecutive year, the Obama administration more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press. The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn't find documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.
More than six years after President Obama took office promising the most transparent administration in history, we have now arrived at the moment when the State Department appoints a “Transparency Coordinator.” Not a moment too soon, one might suppose. -Claudia Rosett
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Obama
The White House is removing a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, making official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject all requests for records to that office. The White House said the clean-up of FOIA regulations is consistent with court rulings that hold that the office is not subject to the transparency law.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Government, Obama, Fraud, Waste, Justice, Corruption, Law
Billions of tax dollars are being lost every day to waste, fraud and corruption in the federal government, but President Obama’s administration is blocking inspectors general — the officials who are most likely to find and expose such wrongdoing — from doing their jobs. That’s the disturbing message given to Congress and the American people this week from a majority of the federal government’s 78 IGs.
Democrat, Obama, War
The Obama administration urged a federal judge early Saturday to dismiss a lawsuit over its targeting of a U.S. citizen for killing overseas, saying that the case would reveal state secrets.
"Before I walked out the door on September 10, I was a strong voice for complaining that this particular administration has been more opaque than any I have covered."
Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Narrative, Oops, Press, Bigbrother
“I would say it is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering, and that includes — I spent 22 years of my career in Washington and covered presidents from President Reagan on up through now,” said Abramson, the NYT’s first female executive editor. The secrecy among staffers is unprecedented. Communication with outside sources — as previous White House administrations have successfully balanced doing — is unacceptable and considered a criminal offense under the current administration.
According to retired ABC News journalist Ann Compton, Barack Obama launches into "profanity-laced" tirades against the press in off-the-record meetings with reporters. In a C-SPAN interview, Compton also derided the President for leading "the most opaque" administration of "any I have covered."
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday announced they have information indicating the administration—a month before the website’s launch—ordered contractors building the insurance portal to change the system so that unregistered shoppers can’t see price comparisons.
Obama, Character, Press, Lie
Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all. The Chronicle's report is accurate.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Obama
Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press. The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Obama, Scandal
The name Richard Windsor may sound innocuous, but it is allegedly one of the secret “alias” email accounts used by Obama EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.
When Barack Obama arrived in Washington almost five years ago, the universal assumption was that the young president—who had, after all, won office by exploiting every connective tool of the national social and electoral network—would run his White House in sharp contrast to the bunkered, hunkered-down George W. Bush. Like so much conventional wisdom, that impression has proved dead wrong.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Obama, War, Terrorism
The Obama administration has rejected requests from The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union seeking information about its "targeted killing" program against suspected terrorists, saying the release of the requested documents would harm national security. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Times and the ACLU sought records regarding the legal justifications for the alleged U.S. government killing of U.S. citizens and others associated with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Obama, Bigbrother
The ACLU says the rule changes would “dramatically undermine government integrity,” and the Sunlight Foundation, in a post that lays out fifteen ways the new rules would undermine transparency, notes that while most coverage has “focused on the DOJ’s desire to lie about the existence of records… DOJ’s efforts to undermine FOIA go well beyond dishonest requests.”
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Obama, Law
A longtime internal policy that allowed Justice Department officials to deny the existence of sensitive information could become the law of the land -- in effect a license to lie -- if a newly proposed rule becomes federal regulation in the coming weeks. The proposed rule directs federal law enforcement agencies, after personnel have determined that documents are too delicate to be released, to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests "as if the excluded records did not exist."
Hypocrisy, Obama, Oops
The decision to appeal the ruling to the D.C. Circuit would appear to be in tension with Obama's repeated pledges to operate the most transparent administration in history. The White House announced in Sept. 2009 that it was voluntarily releasing the names of most White House visitors from Sept. 15 forward. However, the conservative group Judicial Watch sought information on visits before that date.
Barack Obama vowed in 2008 that “transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.” ... ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton calls Obama “the least transparent of the seven presidents I’ve covered in terms of how he does his daily business.”
Hypocrisy, Union, Obama
Weeks after President Obama took office, John Gage, the head of the largest union for federal workers in the country, gave a speech hailing the new administration as a champion for “transparency, accountability and good government.” But in a sharply worded federal lawsuit filed last week, that same union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), accused the Obama administration of keeping important government records secret.
Obama
Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission
no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.
Obama
WASHINGTON – Two years into its pledge to improve government transparency, the Obama administration took action on fewer requests for federal records from citizens, journalists, companies and others last year even as significantly more people asked for information.
Hypocrisy, Obama
Similarly, the logs are missing the names of thousands of other visitors to the White House, including lobbyists, government employees, campaign donors, policy experts and friends of the first family, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity.