Bush’s Cake and FOIA Red Tape: A Whimsical Look at a Serious Transparency Issue

The practice of actually using the laws intended to promote transparency illustrates just how broken the process of legal disclosure can be.

By J. Pat Brown, WhoWhatWhy, Oct. 15, 2023

Government transparency earned a rare victory this week. Arkansas’s Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s attempts to strongly restrict her state’s Freedom of Information law received strong pushback, and may even result in that state enshrining transparency in its constitution. But while public support for the right to know as a concept is always a good thing, the practice of actually using the laws as intended illustrates just how broken the process of legal disclosure can be.

By way of illustration, consider this brief account of an early foray of my own.

The year 2016 was one of milestones for me: I got married, I turned a decade older, and I filed a public records request for photos of former President George W. Bush with cake. “Birthday or otherwise,” as the request clarified. 

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