Promises, promises...

I missed a promise in my "Liars" post from a while back. Really, I didn't think it would be difficult for this one to be kept. This involves posting of considered bills for citizens to view up to five days before rushing it forward with a presidential signature, as seen in this article from The Washington Times (as excerpted below):

During the campaign and again during the transition, Mr. Obama said opening bills up for public comment was a way of fighting back against special interests' control of the process.

"When there's a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government's doing," Mr. Obama said in a major campaign speech laying out his goals for transparency.

Maybe the IT department at the White House is finding this task a bit too daunting? Maybe the former Bush administration decided to keep the FTP password for the web site a secret as an exit joke?

Or maybe Obama is simply not interested in keeping this promise for other reasons. It would, of course, be inconvenient if citizens could call their lawmakers and chief executive to account by flagging all the pork (and other stupid ideas) in bills before they were included in permanent law, wouldn't it? Really, why would any of our politicians actually decide to opt-in--voluntarily--to any form of accountability? That's just silly. They're servants of the citizens, after all, and not "rulers".

Or wait--maybe I've got that backwards in this government ostensibly of, by, and for the people.