Why do Republicans always lie?

by: Carnacki

Tue Dec 20, 2011 at 09:35:02 AM EST

Meanwhile, back in May, the Charleston Post & Courier filed a Freedom of Information request with the governor's office for information on the committee. For its efforts, the paper received some press releases and nothing of great interest. Then in November the newspaper filed an almost identical public records request with the Department of Health and Human Services.

This time, the answer included a number of emails to and from the governor, which had either conveniently not been saved by Haley's office or just not included in the May response.

Among them was a message from Haley to her top aides and the person who wrote the committee's report seven months later - DHHS Director Tony Keck - telling everybody up front that despite the wording of her own order, the point of the panel was not to consider the idea of a state health exchange but "to figure out how to opt out and how to avoid a federal takeover, NOT create a state exchange."

Given that bombshell, revealed by the newspaper last week, those committee members unaware of the plan, who spent hours debating, researching and investigating in the faith that they were actually doing something, were understandably upset. One person involved called the whole thing "kabuki theater - all for show." The story so far - dictating the outcome of a supposedly independent, nonpartisan committee beforehand, and then omitting public records from a response to a FOI request - was bad enough. But then came the stonewalling, backtracking, obfuscation and deflection as the office bristled at being called out.