{"id":182179,"date":"2015-11-29T19:28:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T00:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/11\/29\/this-is-a-feature-not-a-bug-8\/"},"modified":"2015-11-29T19:28:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T00:28:00","slug":"this-is-a-feature-not-a-bug-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/11\/29\/this-is-a-feature-not-a-bug-8\/","title":{"rendered":"This is a Feature, not a Bug"},"content":{"rendered":"
What a surprise. Obama’s Jihad on whistle-blowers, and openness has led to a situation where there is no accountability in government programs<\/a>:<\/div>\n

Justice Department watchdogs ran into an unexpected roadblock last year when they began examining the role of federal drug agents in the fatal shootings of unarmed civilians during raids in Honduras<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Drug Enforcement Administration<\/a> balked at turning over emails from senior officials tied to the raids, according to the department\u2019s inspector general. It took nearly a year of wrangling before the D.E.A. was willing to turn over all its records in a case that the inspector general said raised \u201cserious questions\u201d about agents\u2019 use of deadly force.<\/p>\n

The continuing Honduran inquiry is one of at least 20 investigations across the government that have been slowed, stymied or sometimes closed because of a long-simmering dispute between the Obama administration and its own watchdogs over the shrinking access of inspectors general to confidential records, according to records and interviews.<\/p>\n

The impasse has hampered investigations into an array of programs and abuse reports \u2014 from allegations of sexual assaults in the Peace Corps to the F.B.I.\u2019s terrorism powers, officials said. And it has threatened to roll back more than three decades of policy giving the watchdogs unfettered access to \u201call records\u201d in their investigations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottom line is that we\u2019re no longer independent,\u201d Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, said in an interview.<\/p>\n

The restrictions reflect a broader effort by the Obama administration to prevent unauthorized disclosures of sensitive information \u2014 at the expense, some watchdogs insist, of government oversight.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

n a rare show of bipartisanship, the administration has drawn scorn from Democrats and Republicans. The Obama administration\u2019s stance has \u201cblocked what was once a free flow of information\u201d to the watchdogs, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said at a hearing.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They have it wrong.<\/p>\n

Obama simply does not believe in accountability for his administration, because he believes that they, and he, are honorable men, so we have the war on all forms of public accountability.<\/p>\n

This is counter to both common sense, and to the intentions of the founders when they created the Constitution, who understood that a balance of powers, for which regulatory authorities need knowledge of what is going, is crucial to that idea.<\/p>\n

Why I say that Barack Obama is the Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever\u2122<\/sup><\/span><\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a surprise. Obama’s Jihad on whistle-blowers, and openness has led to a situation where there is no accountability in government programs: Justice Department watchdogs ran into an unexpected roadblock last year when they began examining the role of federal drug agents in the fatal shootings of unarmed civilians during raids in Honduras. The Drug …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1010,970,972,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-corruption","category-justice","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}