Sunday, February 3, 2008

Helping Bush with FOIA requests

A letter to President Bush--

Dear Mr. President:
I understand that your Executive branch has been having serious difficulties filling FOIA document requests.

I am sure that this is causing you some distress, as it is commonly known that the free flow of information through the Freedom of Information Act is one of your highest priorities, so am offering an idea on how FOIA requests can be handled in a more expeditious manner.

In a word, Mr. President--consolidate!-- the system you now use is simply too cumbersome , with documents hidden on thousands of different computers, and timely retrieval is almost impossible.

I, for example, find it necessary to maintain only one file, of less than one terabyte, with a few thousand carefully cross-referenced sub-files which allows for instantaneous retrieval of any documents I wish to view, simply by entering a key word. I named the master file "High Crimes and Misdemeanors of the Bush Administration".

To illustrate how this simplified system can be used for FOIA requests, I pulled up at random a six page document ( an opinion piece with 250 million co-signers), converted it easily to a FOIA format, and am sending it along for your perusal. What follows is exactly what someone requesting this document would see, and it only took a minute.

"What We Think of President Bush"

We, the undersigned, being concerned about the future of our democracy, do hereby declare that George W. Bush has committed [redacted] acts, and as irrefutable evidence offer [5 pages redacted]

For his deeds, we recommend [redacted], since [redacted] is too good for the likes of him. [redacted]

In closing, we say unanimously "[redacted], and the horse you rode in on!"

(Names withheld for personal security reasons)

Hope this helps, Mr. President. Let me know if I can be of further service.

Your faithful constituent








1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great stuff! My favorite line? In closing, we say unanimously "[redacted], and the horse you rode in on!" Thank you John for my smile for the day.