When open government slams shut: failed transparency, from Hillary Clinton's emails to hidden campaign contributions.

• Author: Hemingway, Mark

On March 2, The New York Times revealed that Democratic Party presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton had used a private email account to conduct official business for her entire four-year tenure as secretary of state. Clinton emailed President Barack Obama on an insecure server hosted in her own home. She destroyed many of her own messages, as she admitted after the Times article; the State Department had to conduct negotiations with her lawyers to get their hands on what remained of her official records. One can safely conclude that Hillary Clinton was more concerned about shielding her correspondence from scrutiny by American taxpayers than by foreign intelligence services.

Clinton's defenders made several half-hearted attempts to justify her behavior, but it was longtime aide Paul Begala who cut to the heart of the matter. "Voters do not give a shit about what email Hillary used," Begala told CNN. "They don't even give a fart."

It's depressing to contemplate, but as a strictly political calculation Begala may well be right. And here lies the paradox behind debates over government transparency: We don't know--and therefore have a hard time being outraged by--what we don't know. Maybe voters would have been incensed by the contents of the missives, but anything incriminating is likely long since deleted. The Democratic Party's presumptive 2016 frontrunner may well have made the shrewd calculation that it's better to violate transparency laws than be confronted with evidence of more serious wrongdoing.

Clinton's email scandal demonstrates the limits of government transparency initiatives. While 21st century advancements mean our ability to collect, store, and sort data is virtually limitless, any efforts at enacting and enforcing transparency rules are still limited by a political culture that creates incentives to fight openness every step of the way.

The Untouchable Administrative State

Not that long ago, a fresh-faced young senator was elected to the White House after running campaign ads mocking his septuagenarian GOP opponent for not using email. Barack Obama's backers expected not just a tech-savvy White House but an open one: The incoming president promised to "establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration."

In hindsight, Obama's oft-repeated vow to run the "most transparent administration ever" has become a punchline even among his own supporters. On March 17, the White House quietly deleted the part of the federal register requiring the White House Office of Administration to be subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. On March 18, the Associated Press reported Obama set a new record for the number of FOIA requests denied--over 55 percent were refused in 2014. The administration also set a record for improperly denied FOIA requests, with one out of every three denials that was appealed last year eventually getting overturned. And the White House is dragging its feet egregiously when it comes to making information public. Six years ago, over half of all speedy processing requests for FOIA claims were granted. Last year, the government granted just one in eight requests to expedite...