Marsha Blackburn Quotes
Any spending should be debated openly on the floor of the House and voted on in open session, with the American people having a chance to watch and listen.
Blackburn, Marsha. Remarks on Transparency in Government Spending. Congressional Record, vol. 153, Government Printing Office, 2007.
The Senate was debating the Senate Rules which allowed individual Senators to anonymously stop any Senate matter without ever identifying themselves and keeping the information that they were blocking a bill or nomination from the Senator’s own constituency.
There were many critics who were concerned that the ITU was trying to regulate the Internet, but no one could be sure as the proceedings and meetings of the ITU are not publicly available. This is a classic UN problem. They see themselves as representing governments and not people. The Governments have the information and so they delude themselves into believing that they are transparent, when the reality is that for the individual they are totally opaque. Most critics who worry about UN regulation of the Internet, are just as concerned with what other countries are proposing than what there own government’s position is. And most governments themselves do not release the actual transcripts or proceedings of the ITC meetings but only documents giving their positions. This is an example of secrecy being promoted as transparency where the UN covers for member nations who want to maintain secrecy.
In 1814 the British burned Washington including the capitol building. President Madison arranged for the senate to meet in Blodgett's Hotel, on Eighth and E Streets, Northwest. Some of the senators felt that the setting was inappropriate for the conduct of senatorial business. Fromentin disagreed.
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For many people the implication of this quotation is that there should be no government secrets withheld from the citizens who have the right to examine. Others argue that government may have temporary secrets to protect against foreign enemies for example, but that these must be declassified very promptly so that the citizens can examine the actions of their government in time to replace the government if they are not satisfied. Almost all government officials tend to reject the first implication out of hand, and grudgingly accept the second with their discretion controlling when declassification should take place. The problem of America is twofold. There is much over-classification (material kept secret that should not be at all), and the time till declassification is long in general and truly absurd in many cases. For example, there are documents from WWII that by 2013 had still not been declassified. See {591444}, {641317}, and {589105} for exemplar views. William Jennings Bryan introduced this principle into the American political dialogue. See {641027}.
Marsha Blackburn is an American politician and businesswoman serving as the senior United States Senator from Tennessee. A member of the Republican Party, Blackburn served in the U.S. House for Tennessee's 7th congressional district from 2003 to 2019, and as a state senator from 1999 to 2003. On November 6, 2018, she became the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee, defeating former Democratic Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. Blackburn became the state's senior senator in January 2021 when Lamar Alexander retired from the Senate. She is the most junior Republican who is the senior senator from their state. Blackburn was a supporter of the Tea Party movement, and has been described as staunchly conservative.
