Petrelis Files

Bill Moyers Quotes from Petrelis Files on C-SPAN

During a very enjoyable medical marijuana moment after taking my evening AIDS cocktail, I channel surfed to C-SPAN and found Bill Moyers delivering an incredible talk this afternoon on FOIA. As Moyers spoke on FOIA and I medicated, it sounded a few times like he was citing my postings on FOIA and some of the requests I've made, but I thought it must have been the herb fiddling with my hearing. No way is Moyers someone who reads my blog, right?

Guess he does, because about midway through his talk where he addresses the attacks on FOIA by Cheney, Rummy and Scalia in 1975 and segues to the recent limited release of hundreds of pages on Samuel Alito by the Justice Department, mangles my blog's name and then goes on to quote this passage from a posting of mine from last month:

Only reporters were granted 180 minutes to peruse 470 pages of information, and my estimation, it would take about 39 seconds to quickly read each page and figure out if the information was newsworthy or worth pursuing further. Not a lot of time to carefully examine documents from our next possible Supreme Court justice.

Now, don't take just my word about what Moyers had to say tonight about my kvetching against the Justice Department on the very restricted access to some Alito papers, and everything he had to say today in his 45 minute talk. Go watch and listen to his entire speech at C-SPAN.org, using RealPlayer programming.

If you want to only hear Moyers quoting from Petrelis Files, fast forward to 33:44 and you'll be in the middle of what he had to say on limited release of Alito's records.

Go here to tune in: National Security Archives Conference on Secrecy and National Security

Bill Moyers, former LBJ Press Secretary and PBS Journalist, discusses secrecy and the Bush administration during a conference on national security and the right to know. The conference is hosted by the National Security Archives, a research institute and library located at The George Washington University which publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). [Scroll down, as this Moyers speech is number 9 on the list]

Knowing Moyers reads this blog is quite a rush. Thanks for the acknowledgement, Bill!