{"id":1144,"date":"2007-09-01T17:45:12","date_gmt":"2007-09-01T17:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/bush-goes-back-on-his-word\/1144\/"},"modified":"2007-09-01T17:45:12","modified_gmt":"2007-09-01T17:45:12","slug":"bush-goes-back-on-his-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/bush-goes-back-on-his-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush goes back on his word"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sacramento Bee<\/a><\/p>\n

TWO and a half months into his job in 2001, President Bush addressed the American Society of Newspaper Editors and faced a question about open government. It’s worth recalling the exchange:<\/p>\n

Questioner: “Would you take this moment to articulate your own view of First Amendment freedoms and give us a sense of the fundamental message that you will send to your administration as it makes decisions on whether to open or close access to government information?”<\/p>\n

Bush: “There needs to be balance when it comes to freedom of information laws. There are some things that when I discuss in the privacy of the Oval Office or national security matters that just should not be in the national arena.<\/p>\n

“On the other hand, my administration will cooperate fully with a Freedom of Information request if it doesn’t jeopardize national security, for example. The interesting problem I have, or for me, as the president, is what’s personal and what’s not personal. And, you know, frankly, I haven’t been on the job long enough to have had to make those choices. … I used to be an avid e-mailer, and I e-mailed to my daughters or e-mailed to my father, for example, and I don’t want those e-mails to be in the public domain. …<\/p>\n

But we’ll cooperate with the press, unless we think it’s a matter of national security or something that’s entirely private.”<\/p>\n

Today, you’re no longer a rookie, Mr. President. You should be clear by now about what is a public e-mail and what is a family e-mail.<\/p>\n

It is a matter of public concern that at least 5 million White House e-mails are missing. A watchdog group has sued for the White House Office of Administration to turn over information about the e-mails, some related to the firing of U.S. attorneys.<\/p>\n

Last week, the Justice Department argued that the office is not subject to the open-records law. The office’s Web site, however, tells anyone how to use the law to request documents.<\/p>\n

Bush has failed in his commitment to open government by losing sight of what is the public’s business. It is not – and has never been – a fatherly e-mail to his daughters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sacramento Bee TWO and a half months into his job in 2001, President Bush addressed the American Society of Newspaper Editors and faced a question about open government. It’s worth recalling the exchange: Questioner: “Would you take this moment to articulate your own view of First Amendment freedoms and give us a sense of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[27],"class_list":{"0":"post-1144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-latest-news","7":"tag-bush"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}