Obama's Earth Day Wish: Ignite Energy Plan

Obama's Earth Day Wish: Ignite Energy Plan
President Barack Obama is going on the road to pitch his energy planas well as environmentally friendly jobs productionin a hard-hit Iowa town, while administration officials make a similar push back in Washington.
Bird-strikes, like torture-memos: Public

by Mark Silva

People ought to know about bird-strikes on airplanes.

Ray LaHood, secretary of transportation, plans to put it all online this week, on Thursday or Friday, after the Federal Aviation Administration attempted to keep secret all the data it has collected about birds striking airplanes -- the way they did in January, when a flock of geese forced a US Airways flight to make a miraculous landing on the Hudson River.

The FAA posted a notice in the Federal Register, requesting public comment, proposing to bar release of its records on airplane collisions with birds. LaHood says comments have run "99.9 percent" in favor of making the data public.

""I think all of this information ought to be made public, and I think that you'll soon be reading about the fact that we're going to, you know, make this information as public as anybody wants it," LaHood said in an interview for The Washington Post's "New Voices of Power" series. "The people should have access to this kind of information.

"The whole thing about the bird strike issue is it doesn't really comport with the president's idea of transparency," the secretary said. "I mean, here they just released all of these CIA files regarding interrogation, and . . . the optic of us trying to tell people they can't have information about birds flying around airports, I don't think that really quite comports with the policies of the administration.''
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Levin: Probe Top Officials Who OK'd Harsh Tactics

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Wednesday called for an independent panel to determine whether top officials who authorized the use of harsh interrogation tactics should be punished for doing so.