◼ The Obama administration is fighting to keep secret hundreds of pages of emails detailing White House involvement in the 2010 firing and attempted rehiring of Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod after the late conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart published a blog post and video clips suggesting Sherrod was a racist. - Politico
"The parties to this case have no need for 'public access to the documents at issue' because they can litigate under seal any issue to which those documents are relevant. Neither does the public at large have any need for access to those documents. As the United States has acknowledged in this case, plaintiff’s resignation from USDA 'implicate[d] sensitive issues and significant public interest," DOJ lawyers Charles Glass and Arthur Goldberg wrote. "Those matters have already been addressed, however, by the statements about plaintiff made by Secretary of Agriculture Thomas J. Vilsack and by then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs at or about the time of plaintiff’s resignation. Those matters have also been addressed by the thousands of pages of documents dealing with plaintiff that USDA has produced to the public pursuant to [the Freedom of Information Act]."
In the July 13 motion (posted here), the Justice Department lawyers also invoke a deference to "Presidential confidentiality" as a basis for keeping the contents of the emails secret....
