The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 94, No. 62, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 27, 2014 Page: 4 of 10
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The First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establish-
ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the Government for a redress of grievances.
GUEST VIEW
ongress
should fix
the FOIA
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a critical
law for making sure the public has a fighting chance to
get copies of records the government might not want it
to see. For more than 40 years, people have used the
FOIA to uncover evidence of government waste, fraud,
abuse and illegality. More benignly, FOIA has been used
to better understand the development and effects - posi-
tive and negative—of the federal government’s policies.
The importance of open government and the dangers
of excessive and unnecessary secrecy are paramount
now.
The FOIA was created to help strike a balance be-
tween protecting the government’s legitimate interests
and making sure that we the public have the information
we need to make informed decisions about what we will
allow the government to do in our name. Unfortunately,
in some important ways that delicate balance has swung
too far in favor of the government, especially through
the overuse of the “deliberate process privilege.” And
we need Congress to provide a counterweight on the side
of the public’s right to know by putting tight boundaries
around its use.
This privilege, covered by FOIA’s Exemption 5, is in-
tended in large part to allow agency officials the freedom
to share ideas and advice off-the-record. The govern-
ment’s reliance on the privilege is much more extensive,
however. Over time, the government has expanded the
scope of material they consider subject to Exemption 5
to the point that it covers practically anything that is not
a final version of a document. Among many people who
frequently file FOIA requests, Exemption 5 is referred
to as the government’s “We don’t want to give it to you”
exemption.
In one particularly egregious example, the govern-
ment has been relying on Exemption 5 to deny the pub-
lic access to copies of opinions by the Department of
Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. Although the govern-
ment argues that these memos are simply advice from
the president’s lawyers, the reality is that these memos
include the government’s reading of what agencies are
allowed to do under statute. And, once OLC opinions
are adopted, they have the effect of law. In recent years,
we have seen the government use Exemption 5 to hide
the legal basis of controversial government practices,
including the torture of detainees, the use of drones to
kill American citizens abroad, and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation’s ability to easily access American’s tele-
phone records.
Congress cannot continue to allow the government to
abuse FOIA’s exemption to keep the public in the dark
about the law of the land. The first step toward reigning
in the use of Exemption 5 is to add a public interest bal-
ancing test to the exemption. If the government is not
convinced that the requested documents would advance
the public interest, a requester would still have the op-
portunity to ask the court to independently consider the
public interest in release. Secondly, Congress should
specify that the exemption should not be used to with-
hold information forever. In the case of the president’s
records, the law only allows records to be kept from the
public for 12 years. Surely, we should not accord more
secrecy to agency business than we allow the president
of the United States.
This column was written by Amy Bennett, an assistant
director of OpenTheGovernment.org.
Share your opinions with our t
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LEAPS OF FAITH...
Something smells fishy...
Is there something terribly wrong
with our food stamp program?
I’ve heard of a case that sure im-
plies that is so.
Here’s the situation, which is
happening right now, right here in
Baytown.
A woman has two young children
and is in the process of getting a di-
vorce from the father of one of them.
We’ve heard recently that she is
paying for food at the children’s day
care with food stamps.
Hmmm ...
This woman has a good full-time
job, earning more than $20 per hour,
I think. Her almost ex also has a
good job and earns somewhere be-
tween $20 and $30 an hour.
She gets what I would consider a
reasonable amount of child support
from the father of one child and is
currently getting almost three times
that each month from her almost ex
for other one. Both children are in
good health and have no expensive
special needs that would seem a rea-
son for that high-dollar amount.
It seems incredibly excessive to
me, but that’s the way a judge decid-
ed it should at least until the divorce
is final.
That judge also ordered the wom-
an’s almost ex-husband to pay spou-
sal support, adding another several
hundred to her bank account each
month.
Wow. Seems like
she’s making out
pretty good in this
deal.
But wait. Appar-
ently all that in-
come isn’t enough
for her. Now it
seems she has fig-
ured out a way to
cheat the rest of us
out of some cash.
She’s taking taxpayers for a ride by
somehow qualifying for the state’s
nutrition assistance program.
How in the world is that possible?
This country’s federal and state
food stamp programs got their start
in the 1930s, when so many peo-
ple were in real danger of starving.
It came about because of drought,
the Dust Bowl, the Depression.
Nowadays the program is called the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP) and currently 40
million people get food stamps ev-
ery month.
I’m sure most of them really need
them, but not all.
We’re not sure how this happened.
The SNAP program has all sorts of
guidelines for who qualifies for how
much and how long, but somehow
this person slipped through the red
tape, probably by using something
other than her current married name.
Maybe she didn’t actually qualify
for food assistance but rather bought
those food credits from someone
else and has figured out how to cir-
cumvent the identification process I
thought was required to use a Lone
Star card that is the modern version
of food stamps. I use to hear about
druggies trading food stamps for
crack cocaine ... maybe people trade
Lone Star cards for all sorts of other
things as well.
The point is, this is wrong. Wrong,
wrong, wrong.
She should be ashamed.
Experts estimate that about 50
million people in American often
don’t know where the next meal
is coming from most of the time.
Americans living in such food-in-
secure households in 2012 included
33.1 million adults and 15.9 million
children.
Anyone who cheats the SNAP
program the way this Baytown per-
son is doing is taking food from the
mouths of those who need it to sur-
vive.
Such abuses of the system need to
stop.
By the way, this fraudulent bit of
food stamp business has been re-
ported. We’ll see what happens.
Jane Howard Lee is a contribut-
ing writer at The Sun. She can be
reached at viewpoints@baytownsun.
com, Attention: Jane Lee.
Women’s issues could
dominate Texas election
Domestic violence gun ban
law bolstered by High Court
WASHINGTON (AP) — People convicted of mi-
nor domestic violence offenses can be barred from
possessing guns even in states where no proof of
physical violence is required to support the domestic
violence charge, the Supreme Court ruled Wednes-
day.
The case involved James Castleman, who pleaded
guilty to misdemeanor domestic assault against the
mother of his child in 2001 in Tennessee. He was
then charged in 2009 with illegal possession of a
firearm after he and his wife were accused of buying
guns and selling them on the black market.
Federal law bars a person convicted of misdemean-
or domestic violence involving the use of physical
force or a deadly weapon from possessing a firearm.
But a federal judge threw out the gun charges against
Castleman because the Tennessee law doesn’t spec-
ify that physical force must have been an element of
the offense.
The judge who initially dismissed the charges said
the victim could theoretically have been poisoned or
tricked into injuring herself, which wouldn’t tech-
nically count as physical force. The dismissal was
upheld, on different grounds, by the 6th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Women’s pay and health care
are taking over the headlines in the Texas governor’s race,
and for good reason: Women comprise the majority of vot-
ers.
U.S. Census data shows that in the 2012 general election,
4.72 million Texas women cast ballots compared to 3.92
million men. Democrats know that Wendy Davis can’t
make it to the governor’s mansion without female support-
ers filming out in big numbers.
Campaigns also believe women are less likely to vote
straight-party tickets, taking the time to choose individual
candidates and cross party lines. The 2012 election also
saw the largest gender gap in Gallup’s polling history, with
President Barack Obama winning among women by 12
percentage points, while Republican Mitt Romney had an
8-point advantage with men.
The Davis campaign was thrilled to see wage discrim-
ination law and equal pay policies take center stage last
week, and Planned Parenthood Votes announced its entry
into the election scrum to highlight women’s health issues.
With GOP nominee Greg Abbott the hands-down favorite,
his campaign must work to maintain the majority of wom-
en voters routinely won by Republicans, while Davis has
the tougher job of convincing women to switch parties.
Today is Thursday, March 27, the 86th
day of 2014. There are 279 days left in
the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On March 27, 1964, a Good Friday,
Alaska was hit by a magnitude 9.2 earth-
quake (the strongest on record in North
America) and tsunamis that together
claimed about 130 lives.
On this date:
In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce
de Leon sighted present-day Florida.
In 1625, Charles I acceded to the En-
glish throne upon the death of James I.
In 1794, Congress approved “An Act to
TODAY IN HISTOBY
provide a Naval Armament” of six armed
ships.
In 1884, the first telephone line between
Boston and New York was inaugurated.
In 1912, first lady Helen Herron Taft
and the wife of Japan’s ambassador to the
United States, Viscountess Chinda, plant-
ed in Washington the first two of 3,000
cherry trees given as a gift by the mayor
of Tokyo.
In 1942, American servicemen were
granted free mailing privileges.
In 1958, Nikita Khrushchev became
Soviet premier in addition to First Secre-
tary of the Communist Party.
In 1968, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri
Gagarin, the first man to orbit the Earth,
died in a plane crash.
In 1977, 583 people were killed when a
KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off,
crashed into a Pan Am 747 on the Canary
Island of Tenerife.
In 1998, the Food and Drug Adminis-
tration approved the drug Viagra, made
by Pfizer, saying it had helped about two-
thirds of impotent men improve their sex-
ual function.
Five years ago: President Barack
Obama launched a fresh effort to defeat
al-Qaida terrorists in both Pakistan and
Afghanistan, ordering in 4,000 more
troops.
One year ago: Lawyers for Colorado
theater shooting suspect James Holmes
said he would plead guilty to the attack
that killed 12 people and serve the rest of
his life in prison to avoid the death penal-
ty. (Prosecutors rejected the offer.)
Thought for Today: “A sheltered life
can be a daring life as well. For all serious
daring starts from within.”
— Eudora Welty
American author (1909-2001)
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Bloom, David. The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 94, No. 62, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 27, 2014, newspaper, March 27, 2014; Baytown, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth745862/m1/4/?q=hamilton+county: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Sterling Municipal Library.