The Daily Muck

President Bush is in no rush to make good on his 2005 promise to expedite a massive backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests. In fact, he has appointed a person to manage already low expectations and inform citizens just how long their request may take to be reviewed. The National Security Archive, a private research group at The George Washington University, says that because unanswered requests only declined from 217,000 to 212,000 over two years, “many of the same old scofflaw agencies are still shirking their responsibilities to the public.” (AP)

Questions about Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson’s role in his alleged efforts to punish a housing authority director for not helping a friend, remain unanswered even after a round of Senate testimony last week. Jackson refused to answer most questions about an e-mail exchange in which Jackson’s assistants discussed how they could make life “less happy” for the Philadelphia Housing Authority director Carl Greene by stripping his agency of federal funds. Jackson claimed that a judge’s gag order prevented him from discussing the matter but Senator Specter (R-PA) discovered that this order did not apply to congressional testimony. (Washington Post)

President Bush is the “decider,” except when Stephen Johnson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is the “decider.” Johnson has vehemently rejected allegations that the EPA weakened its new smog reduction standards because of orders from Bush. Though records show that Bush became personally involved, Johnson declared, “I made the decision.” (AP)

Intelligence officials have acknowledged that the CIA secretly detained suspected terrorist Muhammad Rahim for at least 6 months last summer “as part of a program in which C.I.A. officers have been authorized by President Bush to use harsh interrogation techniques.” The CIA emptied its prisons in 2006 by shipping 14 prisoners to Guantanamo Bay but the administration reserved the right to use such prisons again. Earlier this week Rahim was transferred to Guantánamo Bay. (New York Times)

An Army judge has told the Pentagon that it must cooperate with lawyers representing Omar Khadr, the Canadian held at Guantanamo Bay as a suspected terrorist. The judge asserted that ”we can’t try the case until we get the discovery done,” “so if I have to come down here every week, I’ll do it, what the heck.” Part of that discovery includes the names of all American personnel who interrogated the Canadian, as well as their handwritten notes taken in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay. (Miami Herald)

In Kabul Afghanistan, America’s first front in the war on terror, newly built mansions are rising since U.S. forces chased away the Taliban seven years ago. The problem is in Kabul’s Shirpoor neighborhood, the new developments are home to reputed warlords and drug lords, and outside the gated community “electricity is intermittent,” “the rutted dirt roads are barely passable without four-wheel drive,” and “most people live in mud-brick rooms or Soviet-era concrete apartments.” (Chicago Tribune)

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Barack Obama revealed that the indicted businessman Antoin “Tony” Rezco raised significantly more money for Obama’s campaigns – as much as $250,000 – than the candidate had previously disclosed. In the past, Obama has described his ties to Rezco as a mistake in judgment, but he now asserts that “the mistake” “was not just engaging in a transaction with Tony because he was having legal problems. The mistake was because he was a contributor and somebody who was involved in politics.” (Chicago Tribune)

Missouri Governor Matt Blunt’s (R) spokesmen asserts that a recent finding that the governor violated campaign rules grew out of a Democrat-inspired witch hunt and an out-of-control state Ethics Commission. Though he believes the ethics breach is really no more than a “debate about accounting practices and interpretation of notoriously vague and ambiguous campaign finance statutes,” Blunt’s campaign committee will pay a $15,000 fine. (McClatchy)