Thursday, January 07, 2010

How's That Transparency Thing Working Out?

A report on the security lapses that brought us the Peni-bomber. According to one source, "you'd be absolutely shocked..."

If Undibomber accomplished anything, it was to force the President to keep one of his campaign promises, the one about Transparency. We now 'know' what happened, and what didn't happen, in terms of the security of Northwest flight 253...or at least the sanitized version of events the White House chooses to explain and which it can still blame on George Bush. That they had to do so as a result of a self-inflicted public-relations wound is beside the point -- government is supposed to explain shit to the people -- and this is at least sufficient.

Whether the Security Apparatus (and the Administration) actually learn anything from this failure, is another matter altogether.

But, contrast that level of (grudging) White House transparency about the mistakes being made at Homeland Security to what is occurring on the other side of Washington on Capitol Hill. C-Span may not be allowed into the hallowed Halls of Congress to discuss another issue that concerns us all.

I guess there's transparency and the there's TRANSPARENCY...

Update: Whoops! Forgot the links to to the articles. Fixed now.

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