Informed, open, or deliberative

Dear Mr. President,

My colleagues in the Fool Department have delegated me to register a complaint against the staffers who came up with the memo announcing that you "welcome a debate" in "light of the recent unauthorized diclosures" and criticizing the proposed Amash-Conyers amendment to the defense authorization bill as

not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process.

The formulation is apparently meant to call humorous attention to the fact that the process by which the surveillance policy was developed was anything but informed and open (unless they meant to suggest that it was open to everyone who was informed, i.e., both of you), and that the White House has done everything it can to prevent the debate it now claims to welcome. As such it constitutes a blatant encroachment on our department's traditional purviews of irony, absurdity, and foot-on-the-rake slapstick.

This bureaucratic overreach cannot stand. Is our ancient and honorable calling to be mocked by a herd of political hires and distributed throughout the staff leaving us with nothing to do but draft the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner standup routines?

Sincerely,

D.G. Yastreblyansky

P.S. Answers such as "I can't hear you, I have a banana in my ear" will not be accepted.

The Tribunal of Fools, from the Bambergensis Constitutio Criminalis (Bambergische Halsgerichtsordnung), 1508. Image reproduced courtesy of the Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.