Chris Horner on being branded as a “criminal” by EPA chief Lisa Jackson.
We reported on Friday about EPA chief’s tirade before Berkeley law studuents during which she called the American Tradition Institute’s use of the Freedom of Information Act “criminal.”
ATI’s Chris Horner writes in the Washington Examiner:
Yes, it is true that Mann is suing a Canadian climate scientist for joking, given Climate-Gate’s revelations, that Mann “should be in the state pen, not Penn State.”
Possibly that is what informed Jackson’s broadside. Somehow I doubt this. She was arguing not identity politics, but Identity Law, somewhat more threatening than a FOIA request.
The current outrage of which Jackson is only the most recent purveyor is directed at just one in a long, un-protested series of similar FOI requests. On its face, this appears to be an effort to protect select individuals, a select cause and a nearly unprecedented revenue stream.
That is not legitimate grounds for policymaking. To bow to that is the abuse of the FOIA.
The FOIA laws are tools to protect the taxpayers, by their terms to be applied without regard for political sacred cows, construed liberally in favor of disclosure and interpreting exemptions narrowly. Not to be reinvented as certain, correct constituencies find the moment requires.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/11/confessions-foia-criminal#ixzz1d1pYf400
Read Jackson says effort to get Michael Mann’s e-mails ‘criminal’.