Ethi-what? Transparen-what?

Remember, this is the most ethical Congress in history.

No, really, they actually promised that. They didn't mean it:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) insisted on Friday that she is running the most ethical and honest Congress in history. At the same time, however, she indicated she will not ask House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D.-N.Y.) to resign his chairmanship—at least for now. Democrook Charlie Rangel was found guilty of ethics violations yesterday. But, at least he wasn’t caught stashing $90,000 of cold hard cash in his freezer like crooked democrat William Jefferson who was recently sent to the slammer for 13 years.

Amazingly, she's still saying it:

And hey, how about this for transparency:

Things that are transparent: Saran Wrap, glass, water. Things that aren’t transparent: brick walls, mountains, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

Or so it would seem, if you take a look at the CEQ’s response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request issued by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in which the Chamber asked for the release of documents relating to agency records on global warming.

As the Chamber notes, “CEQ had identified 87 documents totaling 759 pages that were responsive to our request. HOWEVER, they could not release most of the documents because they ‘originated’ with another agency.”

So what did CEQ produce? An entirely blacked-out, redacted, Sharpie-markered e-mail, pictured above. (You can also take a look at a PDF of the document, courtesy of the Chamber.)

The Chamber says the response to their FOIA is astonishing, given President Barack Obama’s call for transparency beginning with day one in office:

On his very first full day in office, President Obama sent a memorandum to his executive agencies extolling the virtues of transparency and open government and directing them to facilitate public access to information. To further that directive, Obama issued a second memorandum encouraging agencies to “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure” when responding to public requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA):

“The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.

Here's the form itself:

The latest in a long, long line of examples of how transparent the Obama administration truly is.

There's my two cents.