On top of the growing scandal showing the IRS deliberately targeted conservative groups, Tea Party, Patriot and 9/12 groups, Pro-Israel groups and Mitt Romney donors, since 2010, we now see that Obama's EPA is acting with the same prejudice against conservative watchdog groups.
Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed by the Conservative Enterprise Institute.
The disparity can be seen in the percentages:
For 92 percent of requests from green groups, the EPA cooperated by waiving fees for the information. Those requests came from the National Resources Defense Council, EarthJustice, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, The Waterkeeper Alliance, Greenpeace, Southern Environmental Law Center and the Center for Biological Diversity.
Of the requests that were denied, the EPA said the group either didn’t respond to requests for justification of a waiver, or didn’t express intent to disseminate the information to the general public, according to documents obtained by The Washington Examiner. CEI, on the other hand, had its requests denied 93 percent of the time. One requests was denied because CEI failed to express its intent to disseminate the information to the general public. The rest were denied because the agency said CEI “failed to demonstrate that the release of the information requested significantly increases the public understanding of government operations or activities.” Similarly, requests from conservative groups Judicial Watch and National Center for Public Policy Research were approved half the time, and all requests from Franklin Center and the Institute for Energy Research were denied.
Reason's Hit & Run does a little searching and presents the EPA's criteria for who gets a waiver and who doesn't as well as their "interpretive license" in making the determination.
They go on to point out "The EPA isn't the first federal agency under Obama to make FOIA decisions based on a requester's politics."
....In July 2009, the Department of Homeland Security instituted a new rule requiring career FOIA employees to route information requests through political appointees in Secretary Janet Napolitano's office. If the request came from Congress, career employees were expected to alert political appointees to the party affiliation of the office making the request. The policy lasted for roughly a year, and was discontinued when the Associated Press's reporting led to an investigation by the House Oversight Committee.Will the Obama administration once again claim "we didn't know until we read it in the news?"
Smack in the middle between the EPA and DHS incidents is the Federal Communications Commission, which in 2011 was accused of expediting an insanely broad request from the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington while at the same time maintaining one of the highest rejection rates of any federal agency.
