Obama Opens Lady Liberty's Raincoat

With his first act in office yesterday, President Obama struck a righteous blow against the perversion of our great country's founding principles.

A quick summary, from today's New York Times:

The new president effectively reversed a post-9/11 Bush administration policy making it easier for government agencies to deny requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act, and effectively repealed a Bush executive order that allowed former presidents or their heirs to claim executive privilege in an effort to keep records secret.

“Starting today,” Mr. Obama said, “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known.”

All citizens, regardless of political persuasion, should be proud of this action. In a constitutional republic such as ours — where the people and the rule of law are sovereign, and not kings, generalissimos or fuhrers — we elect representatives to do our business. And we possess the solemn right to know about how that business is being conducted. 

To be sure, there are extremely rare instances when the public's right to know is outweighed by some other factor, most often the threat that disclosure would compromise national security. But the danger of such an exception is the temptation to invoke it unnecessarily. For our nation to thrive, all government information and records should be deemed public by default, and the burden put on our leaders to prove otherwise. Too often during the past eight years that guiding principle has been turned on its head. 

I've said it many times on this blog but it cannot be repeated enough: all elected and appointed government officials, from the president down to the lowliest municipal grunt, work for us. Our duty as citizens is to insist that they behave accordingly, and exercise our power to punish them when they don't.