Site search
sponsored by
News
From The First Amendment Center we find the following:
“Our blueprint for personal freedom and the freedom and the hallmark of an open society, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech, ‘freedom of press’, religion, assembly and petition.”
On January 21, 2009, Obama said: “The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative abstract fears.”
From his statement it would appear Obama supports the First Amendment. But not true.
Attorney Jaffer of the ACLU said it best: “Last week President Obama announced that he would suppress prisoner abuse photographs that he said he would release. Given the president’s stated commitment to government transparency, this reversal was both surprising and profoundly disappointing.”
President Obama’s rationale for suppressing the photographs is that they would inflame anti-American opinion and put our troops in greater danger just doesn’t hold water. This was the same rationale used by the Bush administration.
I am in agreement with attorney Sing of the ACLU when he said: “To give the government the power to suppress information because it might anger unidentified sets of people in an unspecified part of the world and ultimately endanger an ill-defined group of U.S. personnel would be to invest in with a virtually unlimited censorial power. And by investing it with such power, we would effectively be affording the greatest protection from disclosure that depicts the worst kinds of government misconduct.”
U. S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1916-39), in a series of articles on the doctrine of ‘New Freedom’ wrote: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”
I hope that President Obama will embrace the sunshine and transparency he promised as a candidate and lift the veil of secrecy that has, more often than not, damaged the image of the United States.
Please take time to check out: www.thefirstamendmentcenter.org.
Harry Temple III
Snowmass Village
“Our blueprint for personal freedom and the freedom and the hallmark of an open society, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech, ‘freedom of press’, religion, assembly and petition.”
On January 21, 2009, Obama said: “The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative abstract fears.”
From his statement it would appear Obama supports the First Amendment. But not true.
Attorney Jaffer of the ACLU said it best: “Last week President Obama announced that he would suppress prisoner abuse photographs that he said he would release. Given the president’s stated commitment to government transparency, this reversal was both surprising and profoundly disappointing.”
President Obama’s rationale for suppressing the photographs is that they would inflame anti-American opinion and put our troops in greater danger just doesn’t hold water. This was the same rationale used by the Bush administration.
I am in agreement with attorney Sing of the ACLU when he said: “To give the government the power to suppress information because it might anger unidentified sets of people in an unspecified part of the world and ultimately endanger an ill-defined group of U.S. personnel would be to invest in with a virtually unlimited censorial power. And by investing it with such power, we would effectively be affording the greatest protection from disclosure that depicts the worst kinds of government misconduct.”
U. S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1916-39), in a series of articles on the doctrine of ‘New Freedom’ wrote: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”
I hope that President Obama will embrace the sunshine and transparency he promised as a candidate and lift the veil of secrecy that has, more often than not, damaged the image of the United States.
Please take time to check out: www.thefirstamendmentcenter.org.
Harry Temple III
Snowmass Village
