As the story of the Cheney shooting episode unfolds a lot of the news outlets are of course trying to get to the bottom of the specifics of this event. And while there is a great importance to the specifics of this story, there is a greater underlying theme to this that is getting little media attention. That is how this Administration time and time again is making information opaque instead of transparent.

Over the past five-plus years, this Administration has decided to cherry pick or eliminates information to suit their needs, and this story is no different. The VP office decided to allow the property owner submit a statement to the local paper, but not to the White House press core. Secret Service put oppressive restrictions on the local Sherriff’s office to conduct their investigation and didn’t allow them to talk to Cheney till the next day. Imagine if alcohol played a part in this, we would never know and if alcohol didn’t play apart in this terrible situation it would have ruled this variable out. But instead the VP office decided on a course of obscurity and questions will be raised and scenarios will be talked out next to water coolers across America.

Like in the past, this Administration loves to keep quiet on the meat of a topic. When it came to energy policy they only included oil executives through closed door sessions. When it came to the Iraq war they were heard and heavy to go to war, but gave few details on the why and how (of course later on we know that the why was based on falsehoods and the how was never really planned out). Now we have this same broken record in a new topic.

It is time us as Americans demand transparency from our elected officials, be it local, state, or federal. It’s only with our vigilant oversight can we make sure politicians stay the course and properly conduct the people’s business. It’s clearly evident that this Administration shows what happens when a stranglehold on information happens from the top.