Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Death By A Thousand FOIAs

This Wall Street Journal article here claims that Gov. Palin was driven out of office by political opponents using Freedome of Information Act requests to bog down her administration and rachet up her legal fees.

This situation developed because Alaska's transparency laws allow anyone to file Freedom of Information Act requests. While normally useful, in the hands of political opponents FOIA requests can become a means to bog down a target in a bureaucratic quagmire, thanks to the need to comb through records and respond by a strict timetable. Similarly, ethics investigations are easily triggered and can drag on for months even if the initial complaint is flimsy. Since Ms. Palin returned to Alaska after the 2008 campaign, some 150 FOIA requests have been filed and her office has been targeted for investigation by everyone from the FBI to the Alaska legislature. Most have centered on Ms. Palin's use of government resources, and to date have turned up little save for a few state trips that she agreed to reimburse the state for because her children had accompanied her. In the process, though, she accumulated $500,000 in legal fees in just the last nine months, and knew the bill would grow ever larger in the future.
As much as protecting her children from vile attacks and lies, this senseless battering of a governor trying to do her job reveals just how ugly liberals are.

I can not wait until she gets her last laugh.

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