Welcome Frank Lester, BOTM for April, 2008
On the blogger-of-the-month (BOTM) tap this month for your viewing/reading pleasure will be Frank Lester. Frank works at UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies Library -- read more about Frank on his FGI bio page. Boy, have we been on a run with our BOTM's or what? Huge thanks to Rebecca Blakeley, our BOTM for March, 2008. Rebecca posted a ton of interesting stories, commented on hers and others' posts and constantly beat me to the punch on tracking key stories. Below are just some of her posts over the month. Thanks again Rebecca. We hope you continue to feed us interesting stories in the future! Continue reading
Frank Lester, blogger of the month for April, 2008
Frank Lester is Electronic Services Librarian at the Institute of Governmental Studies Library at the University of California at Berkeley, a collection specializing in non-trade materials, ephemera, serials, and mongraphs relating to California and federal politics, public policy, and public administration. He is also the Institute of Governmental Studies webmaster and is on a rotating 2-year assignment as the webmaster of the Librarians Association of the University of California (LAUC), ending in the fall of 2008. Previous to IGS, he was an assistant government documents librarian at the University of Michigan, staff assistant at the Scholarly Publishing Office at the University of Michigan, and a reference administrator at the Internet Public Library. Prior to his career as a librarian, Lester was a member of the campaign finance staff at the San Francisco Ethics Commission for three years. Lester has published in the Journal of Electronic Publishing and is the main contributor to the California Policy Inbox, a regularly updated blog highlighting recently-published California government agency and non-profit organization public policy documents and current California public policy news developments. Lester's main interests are national, state, and local politics, the role of developing technologies in increasing public access to and interest in government documents, and the intersection between the digital and the traditional library realms. Continue reading
International Atlanta Declaration on Right of Access to Information
Declaration to Advance the Right of Access to Public Information Worldwide Released Today, Carter Center , March 26, 2008. Participants in a global conference on the right of access to public information have released the Atlanta Declaration and Plan of Action to advance access to information as a fundamental human right.
The conference, held Feb. 27-29, 2008, brought together more than 125 representatives of government, civil society, media, private sector, international financial institutions, donors, and academics from 40 countries at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The declaration states that "access to information is a fundamental human right; it is essential for human dignity, equity and peace with justice; and a lack of access to information disproportionately affects the poor, women, and other vulnerable and marginalized people."
- ATLANTA DECLARATION AND PLAN OF ACTION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE RIGHT OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION The Carter Center, Atlanta Georgia. February 29, 2008.
Yoo Torture memo released
Secret Bush Administration Torture Memo Released Today In Response To ACLU Lawsuit (4/1/2008) American Civil Liberties Union. "A secret memo authored by the Department of Justice (DOJ) asserting that President Bush has unlimited power to order brutal interrogations to extract information from detainees was declassified today as a result of an American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The memo, written by John Yoo, then a deputy at the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), was sent to the Defense Department in March 2003."
- Memorandum for William J. Haynes II, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Re: Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States, by John Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel. March 14, 2003. Declassify under authority of Executive Order 1958 By Acting General Counsel, Department of Defense By Daniel 1. Dell'Orto, 31 March 2008.
News Stories:
- Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators "Justice Dept. Official in 2003 Said President's Wartime Authority Trumped Many Statutes" By Dan Eggen and Josh White Washington Post. Wednesday, April 2, 2008; Page A01.
- ’03 U.S. Memo Approved Harsh Interrogations, By MARK MAZZETTI, New York Times, April 2, 2008. Continue reading
Bill aims to expose and limit exemptions to FOIA
A bill, the OPEN FOIA Act of 2008 (S.2746), was introduced in March by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX). It would add an important provision to last year's OPEN Government Act (PUBLIC LAW 110-175--DEC. 31, 2007) and attempt to make it harder for Congress to slip into bills language that would preclude the release of information to the public under FOIA.
More about the bill here:
- S. 2746 at GovTrack.us
- S. 2746 at Thomas
- Congress Needs to Learn a Little Openness Itself, Project on Government Oversight (POGO), March 13, 2008. Excperpt: "The new bill requires that when Congress provides for any statutory exemption to FOIA, it must state its intention to do so clearly and explicitly. It seems unobjectionable, right? Nevertheless, last year the Administration did object, and offered so many changes that the language got watered down until it ultimately was dropped from the OPEN Government bill."
- Congress Is Pushed To Make More Information Public, by Michael Posner, CongressDaily, March 31, 2008 PM edition [subscription required]. Excerpt: "Often the congressional-written exemptions are tucked into fine print in the middle of complex bill language. An example cited by the Senate Judiciary Committee staff is an exemption in a consumer protection bill banning lead in toys that allows keeping some product information confidential if a foreign government requests it.