O v. W

Bush’s shadow still looms over the justice department.

President Obama, as soon as he took over the office issued  memos to designed to improve the federal government’s openness and transparency. The first memo instructs all agencies and departments to “adopt a presumption in favor” of Freedom of Information Act requests, while the second memo orders the director of the Office of Management and Budget to issue recommendations on making the federal government more transparent.

In-spite  of Obama’s directive, the justice department is still trying to shield the dirty secrets and methodologies of the Bush administration, which was one of the worst administrations in the history of this country. It was a sham democracy, and the administration conducted more terrorizing activities under the pretext of security than any terrorists from outside the country. All the freedoms and values that this country was built on were cast aside without any recourse. Organization like the EFF, the ACLU and others tried their best to resist these by filing law suits and bringing these issues and activities in the open to create public awareness.

The Bush Justice Department said it would use any legitimate legal argument to defend withholding records from the public.The Obama administration is just advocating the opposite and seeking openness and disclosure, but we might just never come to know the dirty secrets of the past administration. The silver lining is that it is the past administration and thank God it is over and hopefully we don’t have to be subjected to humiliating treatment each time we are in the public for the simple reason that we look different or that our name sounds different.