Remember Attorney General Eric Holder’s memo last year stating that agencies should administer the Freedom of Information Act with a presumption in favor of disclosure? One private research organization is wondering whether some of Holder’s subordinates got the message, based on their attempt to thwart full release of a report detailing Nazi-hunting efforts in the United States. “Here you’ve got the Justice Department flouting the direct guidance of the attorney general,” Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, based at The George Washington University, said Wednesday in a phone interview. “Holder should be outraged.” The report is a history…
Browsing: Commerce Department
We reported earlier this month on the expected wave of “midnight regulation” at the end of the Bush administration. Agencies were supposed to issue all final regulations by Nov. 1, according to OMB, except in “extraordinary circumstances.” But experts predicted dozens of new rules would miss the deadline and slip out the door before Jan. 20 (as happens during every transition). Sure enough, there are more than a dozen new rules in today’s Federal Register, including at least two proposed rules (which agencies were supposed to stop creating by July 1). A few examples: A final rule from the EPA…