White House scrubs site in attempt to make office 'exempt'

Nick Juliano
Published: Tuesday September 4, 2007

The White House has scrubbed its Web site of evidence it has reversed its policies on allowing public access to information to which it is legally entitled. However, a source told Raw Story that the scrub would have no legal implications.

Sometime over the weekend, White House computer technicians removed from government Web sites any references to the Office of Administration or its previous compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests.

Where visitors once just found information about how to file public records requests or view annual reports on the Office of Administration's FOIA compliance, the White House has appended the following admonition:

"The Office of Administration, whose sole function is to advise and assist the President, and which has no substantial independent authority, is not subject to FOIA and related authorities. However, these pages have been maintained due to the Presidential Records Act."

Two other sites that previously listed the OA as subject to FOIA regulations have since been updated to reflect the opposite position, with similar stark denials of public accessibility at the top of each page.

...The office previously had a set of FOIA protocols and handled FOIA requests...

... the Bush administration is trying to subvert long-standing open-government policies...

The White House's attempt to erase the policies was discovered on the same day Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington submitted a new brief in its FOIA lawsuit seeking information on five million missing e-mails sent by the president's advisers on Republican Party-owned accounts.

CREW first documented the White House efforts Tuesday,...

This is the prior inforomation dated from October 6, 2005, which for some reason is the latest date available via the Wayback Machine.

The Office of Administration's Electronic Reading Room

The Electronic Reading Room contains documents specifically identified for inclusion by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as well as documents for which we have received multiple FOIA requests.

GILS Information

Purchase Cardholders

Annual FOIA Reports

2004
2003
2002
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2000
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1996

Index and Descri

More Microsoft being Microsoft

Home » OSI Board Blog » esr's blog

Submitted by esr on Fri, 2007-08-31 03:25.
» My Resolve To Treat Microsoft Like Any Another License Submitter Is Being Sorely Tested.

But I find that my resolve is being sorely tested. Because Microsoft's behavior in the last few months with respect to OOXML has been egregious. They haven't stopped at pushing a "standard" that is divisive, technically bogus, and an obvious tool of monopoly lock-in; they have resorted to lying, ballot-stuffing, committee-packing, and outright bribery to ram it through the ISO standardization process in ways that violate ISO's own guidelines wholesale.

If Microsoft succeeds (which is beginning to look likely) they will have not merely damaged the prospects of open-source software, they will have ruined the good name of ISO by corrupting its people and processes. Because if OOXML, with all its huge flaws, really does pass, no one who has been conscious while this was going on is going to believe the process it passed through wasn't a charade bought and paid for by Microsoft marketing.

Bush and the Global Warming Case

Court Rules Against Bush Administration in Global Warming Case:

Federal Judge Orders Production of Suppressed

Scientific Reports on Global Warming Impacts

OAKLAND, Calif.–The Bush administration was rebuked today by a federal judge for suppressing scientific reports on the impacts of global warming on the United States. In response to a lawsuit brought last year by conservation organizations, Federal District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong issued an order finding the Bush administration in violation of the Global Change Research Act of 1990 for failing to produce an updated Research Plan and a National Assessment as required by the statute.
“This administration has denied and suppressed the science of global warming at every turn,” said Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the attorneys arguing the case. “Today’s ruling is a stern rebuke of the administration’s head-in-the-sand approach to global warming.”

The Research Plan and National Assessment required by the Global Change Research Act are intended to be the preeminent documents guiding federal research and policy-making on issues related to global warming. The Research Plan guides all federal climate research, while the National Assessment serves to provide an understandable summary of global warming impacts on the environment, economy, human health and human safety of the United States and is to by used by Congress and federal agencies in setting policy and responding to global warming.
The last National Assessment was issued in late 2000 under the Clinton administration. Its use and dissemination was suppressed by the Bush administration, and the required update in 2004 was never produced. The Research Plan was required by law to be updated in 2006 but also has never been produced.

The Court ordered the Bush administration to issue the draft overdue Research Plan by March 1, 2008, with a final 90 days thereafter, and the National Assessment by May 31, 2008.

“Knowledge is the key to effective action,” said Danielle Fugere, global warming program director for Friends of the Earth. “Congress knew this when it required the best minds in our government to conduct a National Assessment documenting the impacts of global warming on the U.S. Today’s ruling will help make that information available.”

In April 2005, at the request of Senators John Kerry and John McCain, the U.S. Government Accountability Office investigated the Bush administration’s failure to produce a 2004 National Assessment. It concluded that 1) the administration “did not submit a scientific assessment in November 2004, 4 years after the previous assessment, as required by the [Global Change Research] act,” 2) the administration expressly refuses to complete a single National Assessment, and 3) the White House’s piecemeal approach lacks an “explicit plan or…assessing the effects of global change on the eight areas enumerated in the act: the natural environment, agriculture, energy production and use, land and water resources, transportation, human health and welfare, human social systems, and biological diversity. “From muzzling NASA’s top climate scientist to political cronies in the White House editing climate science reports, the Bush administration has repeatedly tried to obscure and deny the science, while attempting to run out the clock on his administration,” said John Coequyt, energy policy analyst with Greenpeace.

Scientific research continues to indicate that rapid global warming from human production of greenhouse gases threatens every aspect of society, from our economy and public health to water availability and biological diversity. Recent scientific literature documents the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets at a rate faster than predicted. There is also evidence that the Arctic permafrost is beginning to melt, which will result in massive emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane. Dr. James Hansen, NASA’s leading
climate scientist, has warned that just 10 more years on current greenhouse gas emissions trajectories will commit the world to large-scale, disastrous climate impacts.

Today’s court ruling comes in the case Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace, Inc. v. Brennan, et al.,
(Case No. 06-CV-7062 (SBA) (N.D. Cal.)). Senator Kerry and Congressman Jay Inslee filed an amicus brief and moved to intervene in support of plaintiffs in the case.

NSA and AT&T

AT&T engineer: NSA built secret rooms in our facilities

AT&T engineer: NSA built secret rooms in our facilities

By Nate Anderson | Published: April 12, 2006 - 11:55AM CT

The EFF's case against AT&T has barely begun, yet it has already brought to light some fascinating details about the methods behind the NSA's alleged wiretapping abilities. Mark Klein, a retired AT&T engineer who is now participating in the case as a witness, has released a statement to the media in which he outlines many of the allegations that are currently under seal. Chief among them is his claim that AT&T installed powerful traffic monitoring equipment in a "secret room" in their San Francisco switching office at the behest of the NSA.

Petraeus Report

Again and Again, White House Falsely Described Coming Iraq Report As Solely The Work Of Petraeus
August 15, 2007 -- 5:37 PM EST // //

By now you've probably heard the news that the report on Iraqi progress we've been expecting in September from General Petraeus is actually going to be written by the White House, with "input" from "officials throughout government."

As the Los Angeles Times, which broke the story today, suggests, this revelation is at odds with "Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker."

Impeach Gonzales, Part 2: The Crimes

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: John Boehner = Denny Hastert, at least -- Plus, key questions for Tom Reynolds

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: John Boehner = Denny Hastert, at least -- Plus, key questions for Tom Reynolds

...now there seems to be still another Boehner version, as The Palm Beach Post reports this morning: "Boehner told the Dayton Daily News he was '99 percent' sure he talked to Hastert about the matter, but also said he did not recall their conversation."

So: (a) Boehner told Hastert about Foley and Hastert assured him they were "taking care of it"; (b) Boehner does not remember whether he ever talked to Hastert about Foley; (c) Boehner affirmatively claims that it "is not true" that he spoke with Hastert; and now, (d) Boehner is "99 percent" sure he talked to Hastert about Foley but remembers nothing about the converstaion. Does that sound like someone qualified to be Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, let alone Denny Hastert's replacement for Speaker of the House?

And this event has gone under-noticed because it happened late afternoon last Friday. Nancy Pelosi introduced a Motion on the House floor to mandate that the House Ethics Committee investigate how Foley was able to engage in such inappropriate conduct with Congressional pages and whether the House leadership failed in its duties. Boehner blocked the motion by claiming that they only learned of it that day, and therefore introduced a motion of his own -- which the GOP majority quickly approved -- to have the question of whether there will even be an investigation decided by the House Ethics Committee, the majority 5-member GOP contingent of which (out of 10 Committee members) is composed of the most subservient GOP backbenchers selected exactly for that reason. Predictably, they still have not decided whether they will even "investigate" at all.

The GOP-controlled House is a legislative body which routinely passes the most monumental legislation within days or even hours of its being completed, without there being anywhere near sufficient time for representatives even to read the bill, let alone contemplate its merits or deliberate in any meaningful way. Just this past week, Boehner's House Republican caucus voted to legalize torture, indefinite detention powers and warrantless eavesdropping before the ink on the final drafts was even dry.

They routinely shove legislation down the throats of House members as quickly as they can. Yet Boehner claimed that more time was needed to contemplate a very short and straightforward Motion directing the House Ethics Committee to investigate the Foley matter. The duplicity and obstructionism is hard to fathom, but that is how Congressional Republicans operate. Boehner not only helped conceal Mark Foley's behavior with pages, but he then actively obstructed an attempt to have the House investigate this matter by invoking the flimsiest and most transparently deceitful rationale to do so.

(2) Following up on what I really believe is the most incriminating fact yet -- that it was Tom Reynolds' current Chief of Staff, Kirk Fordham, who negotiated on behalf of Mark Foley to try to persuade ABC not to release the sexually explicit IMs -- last night I e-mailed the post I wrote about the Fordham-ABC negotiations to Brian Crowley, The Palm Beach Post reporter who first reported that Fordham was working to help Foley manage the crisis. I asked Crowley if he knew whether it was Fordham who negotiated with ABC (this was before Aravosis reported that he confirmed that it was). Crowley did not answer, but he did include this in his article this morning:

CIA Leak Investigation - washingtonpost.com

CIA Leak Investigation - washingtonpost.com

Understanding the Plame Affair

• Key Players in the Plame Affair
Analysis and short biographies of the main individuals involved in the investigation of the leak of Valerie Plame's identity to the press.
• Explaining the Charges
• Q & A: The Leak Case Facts
• Timeline: Libby's Role
• Full Text of Indictment: U.S. vs Libby
• Full Text of Complaint: Plame v. Cheney et al (pdf)
• Special Counsel's Press Release Detailing Libby Indictment
• Transcript: Fitzgerald's 10/28 Press Conference
• President Bush's Remarks