Translucence

U.S. Constitution – Amendment IV: “The right of lawmakers to be secure in their earmarking, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures (including photocopying), shall not be violated….”

OK, we know that the Fourth Amendment doesn’t say that. But we checked just to make sure, because it’s amazing what some people think unreasonable. That parenthetical jab about photocopying is relevant in this matter, and we’ll come back to it later.

It’s a well-established principle of liberal democracies that citizens should be free of state snooping. But it’s equally well established that citizens should be able to do a bit of snooping themselves. They should have good information about their government. If government is not, within certain reasonable limits, transparent, then elections are charades. Sunshine is disinfectant. Transparency works.

The Hill was therefore pleased to be able to report out a story last week in which we disclosed lawmakers’ requests for earmarks benefiting companies that contributed money to their reelection. These requests are available for the first time because of new ethics rules passed by the House after Democrats seized the majority in January.

But opening the earmark records to public scrutiny is one thing; making it easy is another. Indeed, the new disclosure rules are pusillanimous to the point of absurdity. Which brings us back to the issue of photocopying.

Journalists may look at the books (actually binders kept in committee offices); they may read lawmakers’ letters requesting earmarks; they may even open their notebooks and jot down the details. But they may not photocopy the documents.
 Perhaps it is feared that members of the Fourth Estate will follow Sandy Berger’s example and stuff the papers into their socks and smuggle them out. But that seems unlikely, no?

The rule preventing journalists from taking copies of the public documents they are examining is difficult to understand except as a piece of deliberate obstruction designed to slow the process of disclosure. Now we know how Gen. Burgoyne felt hacking his way toward the Hudson in 1777 while those pesky Americans felled trees in the path of his army.

Except that the general was fighting against American democracy, not for it. He was on the side of royalty. It was the tree-fellers who sought democratic self-government. Lawmakers are not royalty needing protection from the intrusive scrutiny by the masses.

Give us transparency rather than disingenuous translucence. Or, as Patrick Henry so famously said, give us photocopies or give us death.