One of my chief complaints with the Bush administration has been a perverse obsession with secrecy. I know that some things have to be kept secret, but lots of stuff is classified when it should be released to the public, and things are generally kept secret long after they should be in the public domain. Anyway, as it turns out, the government spent $6.5 billion last year keeping things secret, and that doesn’t include any money that the CIA spent. So not only is there a cost to citizens in terms of government accountability, but there’s also a bottom line cost in keeping things from us. Seems like their ought to be a way to convince people that open government is a political issue they should care about.