President Signs Law Giving Defense Department Authority to Exempt Photos From Freedom of Information

President Signs Law Giving Defense Department Authority to Exempt Photos From Freedom of Information Act

www.commondreams.org

President Obama today signed into law a Homeland Security appropriations bill that grants the Department of Defense (DOD) the authority to continue suppressing photos of prisoner abuse. The amendment, which would allow the DOD to exempt photos from the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA), is aimed at photos ordered released by a federal appeals court as part of an American Civil Liberties Union FOIA lawsuit for photos and other records related to detainee abuse in U.S. custody overseas, although i

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It's time to shut down Guantánamo, transfer the military commissions trials to federal courts that uphold the rule of law, and transfer prisoners whom the administration does not intend to charge to countries where they won't be in danger of being tortured. Indefinite detention without charge or trial undermines the most basic values of justice and fairness."

"Change" We refuse to define!
"Transparency" we meant the antonym

Great!

This is truly disgusting

www.commondreams.org
(visit the link for the full news article)

not surprising at all, thats pretty messed up

Seeing that this is a new law, wouldn't it be legal for the President to sign and keep the photo suppress until and if the courts find this law unconstitutional?

From what I gather, everybody has to obey a law until it is found to be unconstitutional.

I realize they have ignored or delayed the courts earlier decision, but wouldn't this earlier order now be obsolete because there is now a law mandating suppression of those pics?

Just curious.

reply to post by ModernAcademia


And there's a lot more in the bill too. Nice job on the source for cherry-picking.

Unfortunately this is the way our government works now - they tie really stupid, awful stuff into bills that have damn good ideas and measures in them, and the president can't veto the bad ideas without trashing the good ones, too.

And a line-item veto would just melt into raw damn tyranny.

Obama seems determined to "out-Bush" Bush. I keep wondering when all that "change" is going to come but so far there's not only no "change" there is more and more of the "same".

If it wasn't for all the government take over of corporations and health care stuff I'd think the Neocons would be fairly happy with his performance.

It just goes to show you, no matter who you vote for what you get is going to be what the big power structure wants. Democrats acting like Republicans and Republicans acting like Democrats. There is no "change" in these old dogs...

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


"One bad apple spoils the bunch". If the president was a man of integrity he would have vetoed the entire bill and publicly scolded whichever lawmaker added that ridiculous rider, or asked Congress to present him with a copy of the bill without the offending legislation.

It might have taken a little longer to pass, but it would have been the right thing to do.

This administration is constantly redefining 'Transparency' more and more opaque. Soon you'll be able to hold it up to the sun and have zero light transmission through it.

Gotta love Obama change! Less worth than a plugged nickel!

Man Obama is starting to look more and more our favorite war criminal GWB, Obamatons will surely have an excuse for this one ... i know "its a matter of national security" or "We cant let the enemy know how we do things" , really im waiting for Obama to spout a direct quote from gwb its going to happen

It looks like the US Military is deliberately pushing racism among the soldiers in order to enable them to be cruel the the people of occupied Iraq. When are we going to end this war? How are we going to end this war? Congress is ineffective and half of them are on the side of sending more troops to"protect our soldiers" How do we get out of this damn war?

I was in two threads at once and accidently wrote this here. You can delete it if you want. but it is high time Americans take some kind of stand against this war. We are only in it because we have no control over our government. The people don't want it. It is destroying our economy and enabling the bastards who are running our country to destroy everything we care about.

[edit on 29-10-2009 by m khan]

Yeah right.
As if these photos still exist...
What are we idiots?

Does this also mean that the DOD can keep any photo's exempt, such as 911, UFO's, Area51, or Human cloning or anything else that could possibly exist?