Political Quotes

“Madam Chair, I want to quote President Obama in his first remarks as President of the United States: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this Presidency . . . I will also hold myself as President to a new standard of openness . . . But the mere fact that you have the legal power to keep something secret does not mean you should always use it. The Freedom of Information Act is perhaps the most powerful instrument we have for making our government honest and transparent and of holding it accountable; and I expect members of my administration not simply to live up to the letter but also the spirit of this law . . . The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. This country should be embarrassed by what is happening in Fast and Furious. My challenge to Members on both sides of the aisle is to stand up and have the integrity to say that we have a dead U.S. agent and that we have a Department of Justice that lied to Congress. Where are the guts in this body to stand up and say we're not going to put up with that, that we're going to demand that these documents be provided to Congress? We know, because the inspector general within the Department of Justice has said, they have 80,000 documents. They've given Congress about 7,000 of those documents. This is the test of principle.…”