Actually the following information was confidentially whispered to me. Recently it was reported (by pbs.org) that many critical operations of our current administration in Washington are done in complete secrecy, away from any public awareness. These secret operations of the government reach far beyond issues of national security. Lots of data that the public should be entitled to are being withheld. This information includes such things as:

1) The status of our drinking water
2) Automotive tire safety
3) All kinds of business and consumer information
4) Critical health and safety data
5) Potential chemical hazards in communities across the country
6) Safety of airline travel and other forms of transportation
7) New secrecy in our federal courts - even lawyers are confused about this

Congress is now unable to exercise its constitutional authority to monitor the Executive branch of our government. Sometimes Congress can't even obtain basic information about the actions of the Executive branch.

The Bush administration, in its first two years, classified records 44.5 million times according to the Information Security Oversight Office, an arm of the National Archives and Records Administration. And we are lucky to know that, because, in this administration, not only doesn't the left hand know what the right hand is doing - "mum" is the complete official word.

Remember when we were little kids, we had secret decoder rings and we wrote our notes in disappearing ink and we had clubhouses that no one knew about? This Bush bunch never got over that.

Oblivia Offenfaulty reporting for Grandma Minutia