States Lack Integrity, Transparancy and Access To Public Records

Massachusetts Got an F in Access To Public Information. See complete study at this link

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/11/09/18716/states-flunk-integrity

[From article]
Kansas was rated as one of the least transparent states in the nation last year by a national study, but lawmakers of both parties are looking to change that.
Several bills being considered in Topeka this session seek to make Kansas government more open and accountable to Kansans. Lawmakers of both parties are pledging to support these efforts.
[. . .]
The pledge, drafted by new nonprofit Open Kansas, asks lawmakers to support legislation that will increase the public’s access to information.
Open Kansas noted that Kansas was one of 11 states to receive an F when the Center for Public Integrity rated states on transparency last year.
Kansas such a low grade is a loophole in the state’s open records law that allows state officials to conduct public business on private e-mail.
[. . .]
“This goes beyond tweeting or making a pledge to be open,” Carpenter said in a news release. “This bill represents creative problem-solving to find a new and workable solution that will get the job done and bring committee hearings to anyone who wants to listen in.”

http://www.govtech.com/state/Kansas-Lawmakers-Unite-for-Transparency.html

Kansas Lawmakers Unite for Transparency
Kansas was one of 11 states to receive an F on transparency last year, and both Republican and Democratic legislators are determined to change that in 2016.
BY BRYAN LOWRY

THE WICHITA EAGLE

FEBRUARY 2, 2016

Journalists Waste Voters' and Candidates' Time Asking Inane Questions

[From article]
Trump’s presumed faux pas was his failure to correct a questioner who asserted that Barack Obama was a Muslim. Taylor’s real error as a reporter, like that of all her mainstream colleagues, was to dismiss the questioner’s assertion as a “fallacy” without providing any evidence to the contrary.
[. . .]
Obama’s word, whether on his birth or his faith, is good enough for the center-left media. Although they have chosen to know as little as possible about Obama’s Muslim legacy, the legacy is real. “Barry was a Muslim,” his third grade teacher told the Los Angeles Times in 2007,” and he did, in fact, register in school in Indonesia as one.
[. . .]
In September 2008, in a conversation with George Stephanopoulos set up to quell such rumors, Obama slipped up and referred to “my Muslim faith” before Stephanopoulos quickly intervened to correct him. Slip up or no, Obama found it "deeply offensive" that the Republican camp was suggesting “that perhaps I'm not who I say I am when it comes to my faith."
[. . .]
To those paying attention, Obama’s conversion seemed as calculated as his choice of wife. Early biographer David Mendell noted that in 2004 “Obama, without fail, would mention his church and his Christian faith when he was campaigning in black churches and more socially conservative downstate Illinois communities.”
Yet, when Mendell tried to talk to Obama about his faith and his “ever present bible,” Obama proved “uncharacteristically short” in his responses.
[. . .]
For Obama, lying about his faith was apparently no big deal. As he told Axelrod after stumbling through a question on same-sex marriage, “I’m just not very good at bulls––ing.”
One has to ask, if Obama was willing to bulls–- about his relationship with God, what was he not willing to bulls–- about? Why should anyone, for instance, believe his “for me as a Christian” line?

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/09/so_is_barack_obama_a_muslim_or_what.html

September 21, 2015
So Is Barack Obama a Muslim or What?
By Jack Cashill

White House Shows Contempt For Constitution and Oath of Office

[From article]

American constitutions generally precluded any executive acts suspending or dispensing with the law.” Law professors Robert Delahunty and John Yoo make similar points in a recent Texas Law Review article, noting that Pennsylvania’s James Wilson, the Take Care Clause’s original proponent, explained years after the Constitution’s ratification that the president has no authority “to make, or alter, or dispense with the laws.”
[. . .]
After years of controversy over his targeted nonenforcement of federal laws—from “waiving” inconvenient provisions of the Affordable Care Act to disregarding provisions of the Clean Air Act that would render his climate-change program unsustainable—the president announced that he was effectively waiving the federal immigration laws with respect to 5 million illegal immigrants. He justified his policy on the basis of scarce government resources—the administration cannot deport all 11 million illegal immigrants, the argument goes, so it should at least set policies that prioritize particular deportations over others.
[. . .]
where OLC concludes that the president’s policy does not, “under the guise of exercising enforcement discretion, attempt to effectively rewrite the laws to match [his] policy preferences,” the president speaks to the contrary. “I just took an action to change the law,” he told an audience days after the OLC issued its analysis.
It is this unbridgeable gap between the president’s actions and the Justice Department’s rationalizations that reveals Obama’s failure to satisfy his constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Though a certain degree of statutory under-enforcement is tolerable (and often laudable) under our constitutional framework, the president is not “faithful” when his approach is fundamentally dishonest.

http://www.city-journal.org/2015/25_1_snd-presidential-oaths.html

ADAM WHITE
Unfaithful Executive
On presidential oaths and obligations
Winter 2015

Harry Reid's Legacy

[From article]
For most of the last four years, Democrat Harry Reid manipulated what was once the world’s greatest deliberative body for political purposes, not for the hard task of governing.
The House passed more than 300 bills but they mostly died from neglect in the Senate. What little legislation that made it to the floor crashed as Reid manipulated Senate rules to ban amendments and debate. When Republicans refused to bow to his tin-pot dictatorial rule, he accused them of obstructionism.
[. . .]
Reid also protected special interests. He did the bidding of trial lawyers and blocked passage of a patent reform bill with bipartisan support in Congress and backing from Obama and 500 high-tech companies.
[. . .]
One thing McConnell won’t be able to do is reverse the worst of Reid’s legacy — his undermining the independence and integrity of federal courts. A year ago he invoked the “nuclear option” to blow up the way the Senate confirms nominations to courts, with the exception — for now — of the Supreme Court.
Complaining that Republicans were blocking Obama’s judicial appointees, Reid twisted the Senate rules to end the filibuster, or requirement of at least 60 votes, to confirm nominations to life-time judgeships.
[. . .]
Reid’s legacy is nothing but wreckage: a dysfunctional Senate, hyper partisanship and long-term a threat to the integrity of the courts.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/huntley/30936869-452/reid-leaves-a-legacy-of-wreckage.html#.VF-Qqt0--yO

Reid leaves a legacy of wreckage
Steve Huntley November 7, 2014 1:58PM
Updated: November 9, 2014 2:32AM

Obama Poor Choice For First Black President

[From article]
Obama has charisma and charm, but in terms of character, values, experience and understanding, he is no Jackie Robinson. In addition to those deficiencies, Obama became the first person in U.S. history to be elected to the highest office in the land while having a long history of associations with people who hate our nation, such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for 20 years, who preached that blacks should sing not "God bless America" but "God damn America." Then there's Obama's association with William Ayers, formerly a member of the Weather Underground, an anti-U.S. group that bombed the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and other government buildings. Ayers, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack, told a New York Times reporter, "I don't regret setting bombs. ... I feel we didn't do enough."
[. . .]
But there's one excuse black people can make; we can claim that Obama is not an authentic black person but, as The New York Times might call him, a white black person.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/williamns120413.php3#.UqK2Kd00jDo

Jewish World Review
December 4, 2013/ 1 Teves, 5774
Blacks and Obama
By Walter Williams

Is Obama Like the MA Legislature?
Nothing on the level. Everything's a deal. No deal too small.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/obamas_work_ethic.html

September 30, 2009
Obama's Work Ethic
By Ed Lasky
American Thinker