The free-market focused, Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute is complaining about the EPA's "glacial pace" in responding to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the emails of former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.
No doubt seeking to replay the Climategate strategy of misleading quote-mining, while trying desperately to latch onto the somewhat related news of Hillary Clinton's email controversy, CEI is trying to drum up concern at the usual outlets by portraying the EPA as combatively stonewalling their requests.
In a fortunate coincidence, the Center for Effective Government recently released the perfect way to determine the veracity of CEI's attacks on the EPA. The group has put together an Access to Information Scorecard, that graded the 15 most-FOIA'd federal agencies on their performance responding to requests.
The EPA came in third, behind only the Department of Justice and Social Security Administration.
So this more objective measure shows that perhaps if CEI were using FOIA properly and not merely as a fishing expedition, they wouldn't have reason to complain. But at this point they just need to accept that fishing is all about patience. Regardless, there's no doubt that like any fishing expedition, whatever minnows they catch will be exaggerated when they talk about it.
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