{"id":1879,"date":"2009-04-07T13:12:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-07T17:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2009\/04\/07\/what-happened-to-an-open-and-transparent-government\/"},"modified":"2009-04-07T13:36:34","modified_gmt":"2009-04-07T17:36:34","slug":"what-happened-to-an-open-and-transparent-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2009\/04\/07\/what-happened-to-an-open-and-transparent-government\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened to an \u201cOpen and Transparent\u201d Government?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apparently, some things are still \u201ctoo secret\u201d to ever be allowed to be challenged in court<\/a>. Of course, the effect of this is that the executive branch of our government can do pretty much as it pleases and claim \u201cnational security\u201d or \u201csovereign immunity\u201d to prevent any sort of oversight or review. Sound familiar?<\/p>\n

This is sickening<\/strong>. Just sickening. A government with \u201csecrets\u201d can never be a \u201cfree\u201d government. The more secrets a government has, the more oppressive it is towards its citizens, and the less \u201cfreedom\u201d they will actually have.<\/p>\n

This quote from the article I linked above<\/a> sums it up pretty well:<\/p>\n

What’s being asserted here by the Obama DOJ is the virtually absolute power of presidential secrecy, the right to break the law with no consequences, and immunity from surveillance lawsuits so sweeping that one can hardly believe that it’s being claimed with a straight face.\u00a0 It is simply inexcusable for those who spent the last several years screaming when the Bush administration did exactly this to remain silent now or, worse, to search for excuses to justify this behavior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Equality before the law means equality before the law for everyone<\/strong> \u2013 that must<\/em> include government as much as it does the people they govern.<\/p>\n

A government that is above the law is not a government \u2013 it is a tyranny. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A government which is above the law is not a government – it is a tyranny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[199,2],"tags":[19,89],"class_list":["post-1879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-opinion","category-politics","tag-government","tag-law","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-uj","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":157,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2004\/06\/25\/shadow-government-puppet-show\/","url_meta":{"origin":1879,"position":0},"title":"Shadow Government Puppet Show","author":"Keith Survell","date":"June 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Shadow Government Puppet Show (flash animation): Highly amusing.","rel":"","context":"In "fun stuff"","block_context":{"text":"fun stuff","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/fun-stuff\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":502,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/05\/06\/us-national-identity-cards-all-but-law\/","url_meta":{"origin":1879,"position":1},"title":"U.S. National Identity Cards All But Law","author":"Keith Survell","date":"May 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Given the recent surge in Federalism here in the US (a.k.a. \"states rights\"), I wonder how people will react to this - as it is a huge violation of states rights by the Federal Government. Not to mention that the current Federal Government has absolutely NO IDEA on how to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6318,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2025\/03\/24\/so-sue-me-or-the-federal-government\/","url_meta":{"origin":1879,"position":2},"title":"So Sue Me (or the Federal Government)","author":"Keith Survell","date":"March 24, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.\"","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":619,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/09\/08\/a-us-national-firewall\/","url_meta":{"origin":1879,"position":3},"title":"A U.S. National Firewall?","author":"Keith Survell","date":"September 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Yeah, because nationalism is better than a unified, global information network. People often say that the Internet erases boundaries - but apparently, the U.S. Government likes its boundaries very much, and wants to keep them.","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2885,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2010\/01\/12\/dear-tsa-stop-keeping-secrets\/","url_meta":{"origin":1879,"position":4},"title":"Dear TSA: Stop Keeping Secrets","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"An open letter to the TSA asking them to stop being so secretive - because it's not helping anybody.","rel":"","context":"In "Rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":534,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/06\/08\/school-controls-speech\/","url_meta":{"origin":1879,"position":5},"title":"School Controls Speech","author":"Keith Survell","date":"June 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"\"It's true that under the Court's Establishment Clause caselaw the government generally may not itself engage in religious speech, nor may it give preferential treatment to religious speech. But this ban on government preferences for religious speech doesn't require or authorize discrimination against private religious speech. Such discrimination is itself\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}