The Washington Post by Ann E. Marimow May 22, 2013
The chief judge of the District’s federal court issued an unusual order Wednesday, apologizing to the public and the media for not making certain court documents widely available online.
The gesture of transparency by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth comes at a time when the Obama administration is under scrutiny for an unprecedented number of leak investigations, including one showing that the Justice Department had secretly probed the news-gathering activities of Fox News reporter James Rosen.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Thomas Jefferson
ZitatDuring the 1990s, U.S. District Court judge Royce Lamberth earned a reputation as a Clinton basher on par with independent counsel Ken Starr. In 1993, the Reagan appointee fined Ira Magaziner nearly $300,000 for lying in court about the makeup of Hillary Clinton's health-care task force. Lamberth allowed Judicial Watch bulldog Larry Klayman to depose scores of White House staffers in lawsuits most judges would have quickly dismissed. In one of those suits, the judge accused President Clinton of criminal behavior and asked the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to investigate the president's alleged violation of the Privacy Act. And in 1999, he fined former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin more than $600,000 and found them in contempt of court in a lawsuit filed by Native Americans over a trust fund held by the Interior Department. ...