November 27, 2009

From the Desk of Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton:

Thanksgiving Message to Judicial Watch Supporters

In honor of Thanksgiving, I want to express to you my personal gratitude for all you do to help Judicial Watch fight corruption in Washington, DC, and around the country.

Thanks to you and nearly 200,000 generous supporters like you, Judicial Watch is our nation’s largest and most effective government watchdog. Believe you me, all of us at Judicial Watch are grateful each and every day for your support.

I thought it would be good to use this special Thanksgiving Weekly Update to take a look at where we stand a year after President Obama’s historic election—where we need to go and what we need to do.

These are extraordinary times, and frankly, from where I sit here in Washington I am worried about our nation’s future. The combination of an extreme far left Obama administration and one-party control of Congress has had predictable consequences. Troubling signs are everywhere.

We are now in the midst of one of the greatest expansions of American government in history. And with big government now growing ever bigger, we are also seeing an explosion of political corruption and abuse of power. For the first time in my life, I feel like our government is out of control. And I know that I’m not alone in this concern.

Check out just a few of the lowlights from year one of the Obama administration:

• In a recent court filling in Judicial Watch’s “Filegate” litigation, the Obama administration made the startling claim that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House. In other words, the Obama White House believes it can violate your privacy rights without any legal consequences or accountability!
• President Obama boldly proclaimed that “transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” but his administration is addicted to secrecy, stonewalling virtually all of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act requests.
• The Obama White House has turned the National Endowment of the Arts (and the agency that runs the AmeriCorps program) into propaganda machines, using your tax dollars to persuade “artists” to promote the Obama agenda! According to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, the idea emerged as a direct result of the Obama campaign and enjoyed White House approval and participation.
• President Obama has installed a record number of “czars” in positions of power. Too many of these individuals are leftist radicals who answer to no one but the president. And too many of the czars are not subject to Senate confirmation (which raises serious constitutional questions).

The list goes on…trillion dollar bailouts, government-run healthcare, banks and car companies, ACORN corruption, attacks on conservative media, illegal alien amnesty, unprecedented and dangerous new rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors – this is the Obama legacy – and we haven’t even gotten through the first year of his presidency!

Judicial Watch, of course, stands as a key—and often only—line of defense.

When the Obama administration tramples the rule of law and violates the public trust, we don’t just complain about it. We take action. Our investigative staff just reported to me that we have now filed exactly 300 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Obama administration. And because of its failure to respond to these requests, our litigation department reports that we were forced to file at least 18 FOIA open records lawsuits against the “transparent” Obama administration.

And we’ve achieved some significant victories. We’ve exposed the forcible government takeover of our nation’s big banks, the ACORN-Census connection, the abuse of military travel by Nancy Pelosi (Air Pelosi), and the willful failures by liberals in Congress to rein in the agencies that caused the ongoing housing crisis—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

But we can’t do this work alone! If you are outraged by the massive expansion of government on Obama’s watch—if you are deeply concerned about the Obama administration’s penchant for secrecy and corruption—and if you agree with me that it’s vital to have an independent watchdog organization like Judicial Watch keeping the Obama administration honest, I hope you’ll make a special Thanksgiving contribution today. (Just to stay on track with our budget, I must raise at least $135,000 by this month alone. Yes, I mean by Monday!)

Once again, I want to take this chance to thank you for enabling Judicial Watch to do such great work on behalf of the American people. And I want to wish you and yours a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.

Until next week…

Tom Fitton
President

Judicial Watch is a non-partisan, educational foundation organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue code. Judicial Watch is dedicated to fighting government and judicial corruption and promoting a return to ethics and morality in our nation’s public life. To make a tax-deductible contribution in support of our efforts, click here.