Is Saying "We Don't Want To" Really that Much Worse a Reason?

The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a request seeking the Justice Department's database on foreign lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system. "Implementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating," wrote Thomas J. McIntyre, chief in the Justice Department's office for information requests. Advocates for open government said the government's assertion that it could not copy data from its computers was unprecedented but representative of generally negative responses to Freedom of Information Act requests.

You know, I've crashed my computer system and even my network in any number of ways -- usually porn related -- but copying a file has never managed to do it. This has to be the lamest fraud since Joe McCarthy held up a shopping list containing various brands of whiskey and claimed it named all of the commies working for the State Department.* *Comrade Beam unavailable for comment.