The most transparent administration in history breaks a record for lack of transparency

If you thought the Nevada Legislature was veiled in near absolute secrecy — as revealed by an AP story during Sunshine Week, though a few lawmakers apparently don’t think it should be but are doing nothing to change it — get a load of the most transparent federal executive administration in history.

According to the AP, again with another Sunshine Week story, the Obama administration has broken a record for rejecting Freedom of Information Act requests.

Obama breaks another promise. (AP photo)

The story recounts that in more than one in six requests, or 129,825 times, FOIA requests resulted in federal searchers finding not a single page of records. “People who asked for records under the law received censored files or nothing in 77 percent of requests, also a record,” the AP report states. “In the first full year after President Barack Obama’s election, that figure was only 65 percent of cases.”

The FBI couldn’t find any records in 39 percent of requests. U.S. Customs and Border Protection couldn’t find any records 34 percent of time.

The administration rarely provides any detailed description of just how diligent their search efforts are. The law requires a “reasonable” search effort and the courts have ruled a bureaucrat is to be taken at his word that a thorough search was done.

“They do really crappy searches,” Washington lawyer Kel McClanahan of National Security Counselors Inc., which handles transparency and national security cases, told the AP reporters.

Keep this in mind as the various presidential candidates mouth superlatives about doing the most or being the best or making the country great. It is all as hollow as hope and change.

The most ignored right in the First Amendment is the one that guarantees the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.