Judges rebuff Justice Dept. in 3 FOIA cases

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Judges rebuff Justice Dept. in 3 FOIA cases

By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press
Published: Saturday, March 3, 2012 at 3:38 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, March 3, 2012 at 3:38 a.m.

A judge has ruled that a paper prepared during free trade negotiations can't be kept secret, a rare court order to reveal a classified document and one of three significant losses the Justice Department has suffered recently over open records.

In the other two Freedom of Information Act opinions issued at the federal court in Washington, judges ruled that protecting the privacy of congressmen is not enough reason to withhold records about corruption investigations into the lawmakers.

~snip~
The Justice Department's latest FOIA loss came Friday over the investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif. The government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington wants records of the department's closed investigation into allegations the congressman got federal dollars in exchange for political donations to learn why he wasn't prosecuted. The Justice Department flatly denied the request, citing Lewis' privacy rights.

But U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled privacy is not a good enough reason to withhold documents with such public interest at stake. He ordered the department to list each document it wants to withhold and explain why it should be able to do so, acknowledging the department may ultimately have other valid reasons to withhold most - if not all - of the Lewis files.



Read more: http://www.goupstate.com/article/20120303/APW/1203030589?p=1&tc=pg

[99th_Monkey]

1. Karma's a bitch. Here comes the son, i.e. the real sunlight disinfectant

Since Obama ran hugely on "transparency", Obama is appropriately being
held accountable to his own claims and promises. I see nothing wrong with
this happening, and actually support and celebrate it.

[MADem]

2. The government always takes the "proprietary" stance--it's not clear if they give a shit, either way

None of the events are contemporaneous with Obama--they date back to Bush and Clinton, and they never even came to fruition:

The U.S. Trade Representative has been ordered to turn over a position paper prepared during negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, conducted in the 1990s and 2000s, which never resulted in a deal. U.S. District Judge Richard Roberts ruled Wednesday there were no plausible or logical explanations to justify its secrecy.

If they started handing over stuff willy-nilly, it could get problematic for them, so their knee-jerk, first response is to ALWAYS say "No."

I would not be surprised if the USG does not care either way on this issue.

[cstanleytech]

3. Do you think this case could be used though to force open

the details for the secret meeting with energy companies Cheney had thats been kept sealed for years? After all hes not in office now and surely some of the details of the meeting no longer matter after this many years so you would think that using it as a defense again might not work so well.

[MADem]

4. No, I don't. I think this is a stand-alone situation. One suit, one judge, one ruling.

I wouldn't dissuade anyone from TRYING, though....!

To be blunt and cynical, though, I think any such suit would probably fly better if the principal who had been holding the meetings was dead or disabled, so he couldn't weigh in with his pontifications about how the national security would somehow be compromised by the American people learning of his craven greed and duplicity!

There would be much less muddying of the waters in that sort of circumstance!

[MADem]

5. As an aside to this discussion, who besides me remembers NEDRA PICKLER?

The reporter of this piece? How fascinating that she's still in the game!

She's quite a mixed bag, isn't she?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedra_Pickler

[sofa king]

6. I don't see the big deal

It seems to me that the judge is merely reminding Justice that they must identify and name the specific FOIA exemption used for each document redacted or not released, in this case probably exemptions 4, 5, 6, and, if Jerry was a really bad boy (he was) and the Bush DOJ somehow actually investigated a Republican criminally (unlikely), maybe 7.

Identifying and redacting exemptions--especially each one on each document--takes an absurd amount of time and effort, and therefore money not to be had by any federal agency outside of DOD.

Justice is almost certainly trying to weasel out of that by throwing a blanket over the whole document series, probably more because they don't have the human resources to actually run through the documents than anything else.

For those of you wondering why Justice would cling to the completely fucked up FOIA evasion policies created by John Ashcroft, well, it's because Jerry got away with it, probably with a lot of help from former Bush officials, and now DOJ doesn't want to waste thousands of hours on the white-wash of a previous administration (which is unlikely to reveal any criminal information, because that's what the Bush DOJ has already covered up). You're not going to easily find the evidence to convict Jerry Lewis in the document set designed to exonerate him.

This is just one of the myriad ways Americans will continue to pay for the crimes of the Bush Administration long after they are gone.

Edit: I'm not being clear enough. DOJ considers this a waste of time, probably because the record has already been sanitized by the previous administration. That's a line of defense for Republican criminals, because the more time they can get DOJ to waste on things like this, the less chance DOJ has to actually nail them for something. And it's a waste of money, too.