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In a Freedom of Information Act victory, a federal judge has slapped the Obama administration for its secretive ways and ordered officials to turn over a bland-sounding foreign policy document.
Chastising what she called "the governments unwarranted expansion of the presidential communications privilege at the expense of the publics interest in disclosure," U.S. District Judge Ellen Seal Huvelle ruled the Presidential Policy Directive on Global Development is not exempt from FOIA.
Judge Huvelle's 20-page decision took a shot or two, or three, at the Obama administration's penchant for secrecy.
"The government appears to adopt the cavalier attitude that the President should be permitted to convey orders throughout the Executive Branch without public oversight, to engage in what is in effect governance by 'secret law,'" Huvelle wrote.
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Another federal appeals court has ruled that President Barack Obama's appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were not consitutional recess appointments, making it the third circuit court to invalidate the appointments.
The Richmond, Va.-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled Wednesday on two consolidated cases, both of which challenged rulings by the NLRB on the grounds they didn't have a valid quorum at the time, as the appointees weren't constitutionally valid.
At question are Obama's Jan. 4, 2012, appointments, which were made while the Senate was on a three-week break but was meeting every three days. The D.C. Circuit and 3rd Circuit both ruled in separate cases that Obama's recess appointments to the NLRB were not made during an actual "recess," which they found to mean a break between sessions of Congress.
Citing the two previous decisions, the 4th Circuit on Wednesday also decided 2-1 that that was the definition of recess, invalidating the decisions made by the NLRB under a quorum containing those appointees.
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The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal to the D.C. Circuit case, NLRB v. Noel Canning, in the coming year. ....
