Obama wants a return to ‘open’ and ‘transparent’ government

… but only if you’ll forgive him for his lack of willingness to discuss at length, and have records released of, activities he was involved in during the time he served as a State Senator in Illinois.  Jim Geraghty writes:

Just to review, the public cannot get access to paperwork related grants distributed by then-state-legislator Obama (records from 1997 to 2000 aren’t available); his state legislative office records (which he says may have been thrown out); he refuses to release a specific list of law clients, instead giving a list of all of his firm’s clients, numbering several hundred each year; he won’t release his application to the state bar (where critics wonder if he lied in responding to questions about parking tickets and past drug use); he’s never released any legal or billing records to verify that he only did a few hours of work for a nonprofit tied to convicted donor Rezko; and he’s never released any medical records, just a one-page letter from his doctor.

Now the University of Illinois at Chicago is denying Stanley Kurtz access to documents relating to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a small foundation, founded and inspired by Bill Ayers, for which Obama served as board chairman.

Tom Maguire’s all over the Chicago Annenberg Challenge mystery and writes about it at length here.  Steve Diamond has a detailed background on this story here in a June post .

I should remind everyone that Obama is the same guy who said this about Hillary Clinton during the primaries:

Barack Obama has seized the transparency issue, portraying Hillary Clinton as “one of the most secretive politicians in America today” for failing to release her tax returns and hasten the release of her White House records.

Er, how does one say, “Do as I say not as I do” in Latin? I think it would look great on, perhaps, a faux presidential seal

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