Won’t Get Fooled Again: Day 7
There is something bracing about a Congress, or a congressional committee, that embraces its oversight and investigatory powers with a kind of constitutional "old testament" righteousness. Our constitutional founders created a divided government for very good reasons -- and even though this model of shared governance amongst three co-equal branches is messy, inefficient, and at times politically distasteful -- when the pendulum of "checks and balances" gains a particular civic rhythm, the insights and research unleashed are extremely satisfying. Exhibit A in this democratic discourse is the House Judiciary Committee report: REINING IN THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush. This 487 page report details many of the long-standing objections about how President Bush chose to exercise his authority -- often at the expense of the people and other branches of government. That is not to say, obviously, that the other branches were innocent bystanders in this constitutional encroachment. When the Congress was under the thumb of either republicans or democrats, our legislative leaders showed little constitutional backbone to push back against the presidents power grab. Only the supreme court demonstrated some sense of the limitations on Bush's treatment of the war prisoners. Of particular interest to this community is the report's Section 5: Government in the Shadows: Executive Privilege, Secrecy, and the Manipulation of Intelligence and Section 4 – Misuse of Executive Branch Authority. As we enter a new political season that attempts to walk back the cat on many of these policies and programs, I can think of no better primer that enables any engaged citizen/librarian on what went wrong and how to get back to a more reasonable constitutional ecosystem. See you on Day 8. Continue reading
Won’t Get Fooled Again: Day 6
I got to thinking about all the changes and initiatives launched by the Obama Administration during its first week in power -- which sources of information should transcend the political elections? In other words, as librarians shouldn't we argue that certain categories of federal government information should remain consistent and accessible regardless of which political party rules the White House or in the halls of Congress. For instance, shouldn't there be a standard and predictable form for a press briefing transcript? Compare how the White House handles this with the approach of the State Department. With the State Department the form of the briefing as an actual transcript remains the same from Secretary of State to another. With the Obama press briefings, we get summaries (blog posts) rather than actual transcripts (which were more common with the Bush and Clinton administrations.) Preservation of individual web sites is important. Continuity of essential civic information from one political change to another is equally important. See you on day 7. Continue reading
President Obama Launches New Website – Recovery.Gov
President Obama has launched a new website, Recovery.Gov that people can use to see how their tax money is being spent. He stated that it is “an unprecedented effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government.” As of now, there is not much on the website but be sure to check it out after the passing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. To learn more about it, read his weekly address that he delivered on January 24. Continue reading
Fake White House Tweet
Twitter says purported White House account was a fake, By Patrick Thibodeau, Computer World, January 22, 2009.
For more than a year, an @TheWhiteHouse account on Twitter Inc.'s microblogging site was used to dutifully send out more than 1,500 alerts about speeches, press briefings and other Bush administration news. The Twitter account's claim that it was officially sanctioned by the White House appeared believable, if only because it was so earnest — and boring. ...But it turns out that the account was a fake.Continue reading
Won’t Get Fooled Again: Day 5
I got say, having your Governor impeached by your State House of Representatives and about to be put on trial by Senate, starting tomorrow, just makes me all kinds of nostalgic for other moments of impeachment across this great land. Our Illinois legislature has not impeached or convicted a governor for misconduct for almost a century. In order to set up the structure of removing a sitting governor, our fearless legislative leaders modeled their actions on the impeachment of President Clinton ten years ago. Anxious to refresh my mind on the legal strategies and structures from that event, I wanted to see what artifacts remained on the web. I got to say -- Google was a failure in this kind of search --I turned up over 700,000 hits. The same search terms in usa.gov turned up 99 very specific and on scope hits In this way, the organized structure of the government trumps the expansiveness of the web. I will be very interested to see where (and how) the Obama civic machinery improves on the search capabilities of usa.gov. See you on Day 6 Continue reading