While some of the complaining in the press about President Obama's lack of transparency is overblown, you would think that the new administration could at least live up to the rather simple promises it made days ago on transparency. On inauguration day, the administration promised, among other things:
We will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.
That's great! If only it actually happened. Jim Harper points out that Obama signed the "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009" into law just a day after Congress sent it to him. This is a "non-emergency" law. The Whitehouse did put it on the website for review, but not for five days. And, it's especially troubling since there actually is a fair amount of controversy over the law. No matter whether you support it or not, the administration made a great promise that we support: putting it up on the website for five days to allow public review and comment, before the President signs it. And they didn't live up to that.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090129/1919493573.shtml