“Open Government”? Not so much.
Obama’s “Open Government” Project Censors Popular Proposal to “End Imperial Presidency”
Is irony even the word for this? The president created a new online “open government” system in which people were free to brainstorm and vote proposals up or down. Far and away the leading proposal in the category of “Legal and Policy Challenges” as of the scheduled end of brainstorming was End Imperial Presidency. You can still find it, but it’s been removed from that category and from the list of all proposals. Unless you have the direct link to it, you cannot find it, and when you do you can no longer vote for it. It has a label at the top with a closed lock and the words “pending moderator approval.” When voting was scheduled to end on the 28th, this proposal was at the top in its category and ranked #3 over all.
Then the Open Government announced that it would keep the brainstorming open until June 19th and not begin Phase 2, involving discussion of the brainstormed ideas until June 3rd. So, voting continued, and “End Imperial Presidency” moved up to second place over all. And here we are on June 3rd, and the proposal has been removed from the running. I’m not sure if you call this irony, but I definitely wouldn’t call it Open Government. During the campaign, the top demand of Obama’s supporters on his website was that he keep his promise to oppose and filibuster immunity for telecom companies. During the presidential transition, the top question was whether Obama would allow the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor for Bush-Cheney. Both of those proposals were rejected. Now this one has been rejected as well.
In case it’s deleted from the “Open” Government, this was the proposal to end the imperial presidency:
Leave the White House less imperial than you found it. Appoint an independent prosecutor to prosecute Bush, Cheney, and their top officials in order to deter in the future the crimes of aggressive war, misleading congress, defrauding congress, misspending funds, war crimes, murder, warrantless spying, torture, domestic propaganda, violations of the Hatch Act and the Voting Rights Act, obstruction of justice, misprision of felony, retaliating against whistleblowers, etc. Restore to Congress the power to legislate, the power to begin and end wars, the power to raise and spend money, the power to approve or reject treaties and appointments, and the power to oversee the functioning of the federal government including through the power of impeachment and the power of inherent contempt. That means no more signing statements rewriting laws, and instead support for legislation that would criminalize such behavior. And it means similar action on each of the other offenses.</em>
Nice sweeping under the rug, B.O.
