Reply #35: Ewww, missed this part....

[54anickel]

In short, your government has screwed things up royally, but instead of fixing the problems they caused, they prefer to lie about it.

But they don't have to lie about it if they can keep it secret. Paul K. McMasters, who is the "First Amendment ombudsman at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center" says that the "latest figures released by the federal Information Security Oversight Office show that government workers are manufacturing secrets at the rate of 125 a minute, or 15.6 million a year. At the same time, they are declassifying fewer secrets, and the president is extending classification authority to more departments and agencies. Layered on top of those secrets are an even greater number of pseudo-secrets labeled 'sensitive but unclassified' that, too, are beyond the reach of the public."

What makes this so bad is that "The problem with excessive government secrecy is that it is a refuge for incompetence -- or worse. It is a policy reeking of desperation -- or worse. It is reflexive rather than deliberate, defeatist rather than courageous. And in the end it hides not only what our leaders know but, more important, what they don't know."