JUST ANOTHER DAY IN “THE MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION IN HISTORY:” A computer network at the Merit Systems Protection Board failed, causing the loss of data concerning civil service workers’ appeals in disciplinary cases. Think what you will of government employees but lost data means every one of those cases will either be dropped or restarted from the beginning, meaning thousands more lost hours of productivity.

But forget about finding out what caused the failure, who if anybody at MSPB was responsible or whether the fix being implemented will work. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton reports that MSPB absolutely refuses to make public a report that would answer such questions for curious taxpayers. The agency’s justification is the Freedom of Information Act’s Exemption Five. That’s the “pre-decisional” exemption that is the most frequently abused of the law’s nine exemptions.