Well, the agency I worked for did deal with foreign countries, but we did not attack them. Everything was fair game for a FOIA request except matters dealing with personnel private info, on-going negotiations and internal communications dealing with litigation. Other than that you could ask for anything and get it. So, when I was doing some maintenance on the network and found one of our guys was keeping his pornography collection on the file server I was kind of sweating bullets until he "left" our office and we deleted his account.

Once you have applied for the information and the government begins stonewalling what would make one believe that if you ever got the information it wouldn't be the information you were designed to get rather than what information had once actually existed? If I had control of the information you wanted while you contested for it for three years I would be busy rewriting it to suit my needs.

No big deal - It is a dynamic picture though! And yes, it is a Friday (as we type), so it IS a fine day! Hope you have a great weekend!

Seems to me that Government should not hide anything, except, perhaps, we are attacking this country on such and such a date or we now have this weapon and will use it, kind of stuff. EVERYTHING else should be made public and discussed on a regular basis.

I agree that "the best way to lie is with statistics," and you've hit on a central point: you really have to pay attention to the way the statistic is stated. The one number you quote that I really believe is way off is your number for the total population of the USA. You say 425 million, but I have heard many times the number is around 320 million, which probably includes illegals. So, several of your percentages should be revised significantly if they are based on 425 in the denominator. I also heard (10-15 years ago) that over half of households had at least one firearm, but that fraction may have decreased more recently with fewer people per household on the average (assuming higher divorce rates have something to do with it). At any rate, there are indeed many ways to slant the figures, and as you point out, its hard to know for sure because there is no actually gun registration. But, I do know there are an estimated 300 million personally owned firearms in the USA, and if the 100 million gun owners is accurate, that would imply an average of 3 guns per gun owner. But then, if a husband and wife household has one gun in the house, and the husband is the "owner," does that mean the wife is "not an owner"? - and who knows whether she actually has access to it or not, or whether she has learned how to use it (a valuable skill if someone has broken into their house and killed or disabled him, and now she has to defend herself before 911 gets there). Now, most gun owners probably own only a single firearm, but there are some who have quite a collection. Another reason I think the USA population is closer to 320 million is that I remember hearing that our population was closer to 200 million back 30 years ago, when the NRA membership was 3 million. Now, the NRA membership is 5 million, and 320 million population would imply a roughly constant percentage of the population that becomes a "joiner" in the NRA. Also, 20-30 years ago, the estimated number of gun owners was still the often-quoted figure of 63 million, and now its 100 million (same percentage increase along with population). So, is the number of gun owners increasing because the population is increasing, or is there an increasing percentage of citizens becoming gun owners because of gun-control fear? I'm not sure, but it looks to me like a lot of the increase in gun owners has come more recently, correlating with Clinton-Obama gun control hysteria. Again, there are distributions within distributions. Interesting though...

Did you ever see the movie "Mars Attacks!". I think she did the voice-overs ak-ak-ak-AK-AK.

http://4thestatemedia.com/?p=438

using the IRS as a weapon against the opposition
tells us about their methods. . a-moral. . the ends
justify the means. -- j
.

I used to work for a public agency. We received FOIA requests all the time. I even sent some out to other agencies. Sometimes lawyers would come in with their own scanner because they wanted so many documents and we charged for the copies we made. Anyway, after going through that period of my life it REALLY bugs me to have these Yahoos in the federal government obstruct like they do. I would like to make one change to the FOIA law. Whenever a denial is made an officer of the agency must sign the denial under penalty of perjury that the denial is correct. Then if it is found to not be correct and it is obvious that the officer was just obstructing they would be subject to criminal prosecution for perjury. I would also make them personally liable for the plaintiff's legal costs, plus punitive damages. With that I think the obstructions would soon disappear.

You don't have to hear her for that. The mere sight or thought of her sets it off.

And many of them are in the military.

And there are 100 million armed Americans who are getting more pissed off every day!

"The most transparent administration in American history!" And, it was the democrats who had such a hissy-fit over 18 minutes of missing audio tape...

The FOIA, like every other branch of the Obama administration suffers from a major case of constipation. They will not release any information on anything negative about people who are in the administration, supporters, Black activists, and any Muslims who do not commit heinous acts. In this, they are aided by a sympathetic press who can no longer be called journalists, but biased reporters instead. What is so bad about this is that once upon a time, not so long ago, this kind of thing was done under cover, but now, the Clintons and the Obama administration have gotten away with the most blatant acts that are actual felonies and against the Constitution, that covering up is hardly needed.We are no longer anything like what the Founders created so that even if Trump wins in a landslide it will, at most, only slow down the slide into oblivion.

the reluctant totalitarian state...

How could there be any FOIA problems?
Our wonderful pathological Liar-In-Chief promised us that his banana republic styled regime would be the most transparent administration in history,
I know at about that same time he was denying access to his college education records. But what the hey? Who's perfect?

fingernails on a blackboard come to mind? -- j
.