03-14-09
- Phony U.S. War on Drugs:
- Greenwald: The success of drug decriminalization in Portugal (salon)
- Barack's Secretive Gang:
- Copyright treaty is re-classified for 'national security' (cnet) "Last September, the Bush administration defended the unusual secrecy over an anti-counterfeiting treaty being negotiated by the U.S. government, which some liberal groups worry could criminalize some peer-to-peer file sharing that infringes copyrights. Now President Obama's White House has tightened the cloak of government secrecy still further, saying in a letter this week that a discussion draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and related materials are "classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958." . . . In one of his first acts as president, Obama signed a memo saying FOIA 'should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure.' . . . The White House appears to be continuing the secretive policy of the Bush administration, which wrote to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (PDF) on January 16 that out of 806 pages related to the treaty, all but 10 were 'classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958.'"
- Haute-Provence Star Trails (apod)
