Part-Time Policy Wonk

From Secrecy News:
House and Senate conferees last week approved legislation that would preempt the Freedom of Information Act and permit the Secretary of Defense to withhold from release photographs and other visual media if he determines that their public disclosure “would endanger citizens of the United States, members of the United States Armed Forces, or [...]

From OMB Watch:
After the Federal Election Commission (FEC) formulated a rule on reporting campaign contributions bundled by lobbyists, many were concerned that it was too narrow and would not quite capture very much information. Now, we see those points were not misguided. The situations under which a member of Congress is legally required to disclose [...]

From the Washington Post:
President Obama ordered federal officials to disclose their contacts with lobbyists trying to influence how the government doles out money to jump-start the economy. Yet few such communications have been reported even though lobbyists say they are busier than ever with the multibillion-dollar stimulus.
OMB Watch has a chart listing the agencies reporting [...]

From the Washington Post:
The Obama administration wants to maintain the secrecy of terrorist watch-list information it routinely shares with federal, state and local agencies, a move that rights groups say would make it difficult for people who have been improperly included on such lists to challenge the government.
Intelligence officials in the administration are pressing for [...]

From the New York Times:
A Supreme Court filing from the Obama administration last month has set off alarm bells on the left.
The filing was a friend-of-the-court brief, and it mostly dealt with an excruciatingly technical question about the attorney-client privilege. But its last five pages were about the state secrets privilege, which was not at [...]

From the LA Times:
Although 28 members of the California Assembly supported a measure to allow new oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast, their votes are nowhere to be found in the official state database.
After the measure failed, Assembly leaders expunged the vote altogether, sparing lawmakers running for reelection an official record of their controversial [...]

From Secrecy News:
Even though certain information concerning the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) was redacted and declassified for use in the prosecution of former vice presidential aide Scooter Libby in 2006, that same information is nonetheless “currently and properly classified,” the Central Intelligence Agency said (pdf) last week. The Agency denied release of the material [...]

From Reuters:
A U.S. judge on Thursday denied a bid by Fox News Network LLC seeking details from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve about the central bank’s loans to companies affected by the financial crisis.
The owner of the Fox Business cable network made an initial request for documents in November last year under [...]

From Secrecy News:
Notwithstanding official proclamations of a new era of transparency, public access to declassified historical records continues to be obstructed by procedural potholes, limited resources for processing records, competing priorities and, sometimes, bad faith.
At the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), declassified files that used to be open to the public have been withdrawn [...]