The leading presidential candidates should be questioned about their willingness to depart from the secrecy practices that have characterized the Bush Administration, wrote civil libertarian Nat Hentoff in his syndicated column this week.
Whether it concerns domestic surveillance, coercive interrogation, or extraordinary rendition, “I haven’t heard any of the frontrunners stress this need for a clean break with the Bush administration’s use of a ‘unitary executive’ doctrine to cloak these and other extrajudicial — and indeed extralegal — practices in deep secrecy,” Mr. Hentoff wrote.
See “The Dark Bush Legacy on Secrecy” by Nat Hentoff, Washington Times, February 25.
The article followed up on a related piece that I wrote for the Nieman Watchdog earlier this month, “The Next President Should Open Up the Bush Administration’s Record.”
Rebuilding public participation starts with something simple — treating the public not as a problem to manage, but as a source of ingenuity government cannot function without.
If the government wants a system of learning and adaptation that improves results in real time, it has to treat translation, utilization, and adaptation as core functions of governance rather than as afterthoughts.
Coordination among federal science agencies is essential to ensure government-wide alignment on R&D investment priorities. However, the federal R&D enterprise suffers from egregious siloization.
Don’t like the Chinese-backed EVs that are undercutting your market? Start with a well-designed statute to strengthen market oversight and competition while also providing American companies with support.