Obama Re-Wrote FOIA Laws To Suppress Politically Sensitive Documents

We have now learned that Obama has re-written the Freedom of Information Act and did so without telling the American people. When did Obama do this? In April of 2009. Just 3 short months into his presidency, he decides to take it upon himself to re-write the law concerning the FOIA. How convenient. The re-write involves White House equities, and since that particular phrase is found nowhere in the FOIA, Obama amended the law so as to create a new exception in order to justify keeping documents classified as public away from the public.

The news comes from a new study that was made public today by Cause of Action, a Washington based non-profit watchdog group that monitors government transparency and accountability. Cause of Action states this in their report:

"FOIA is designed to inform the public on government behavior; White House equities allow the government to withhold information from the media, and therefore the public, by having media requests forwarded for review. This not only politicizes federal agencies, it impairs fundamental First Amendment liberties." 

What does this mean? Well, the new exception covers every single document that gets requested, including congressional committee requests, GAO requests, judicial subpoenas and all FOIA requests. And it also does not matter what format the documents are in. The new exception covers them all, whether they are in oral, electronic or paper form.

The FOIA requires federal agencies to respond to a request for information within 20 days of receiving it. Now with the new exception, it is virtually impossible to ever meet that deadline. More from Cause of Action:

In one case cited by Cause of Action, the response to a request from a Los Angeles Times reporter to the Department of the Interior for "communications between the White House and high-ranking Interior officials on various politically sensitive topics" was delayed at least two years by the equities review.

"Cause of Action is still waiting for documents from 16 federal agencies, with the Department of Treasury having the longest pending request of 202 business days.

"The Department of Energy is a close second at 169 business days. The requests to the Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services have been pending for 138 business days," the report said.

Still want to tell me we don't live under dictatorship? Try again because there is a tyrant in the white house and unless we come together in 2014 to flip the Senate and hang on to Congress, there is no way in hell we will ever get him out. Be watching soon for the implementation of full blown martial law. During martial law, all elections are put on hold. That will give the bastard a "3rd term".