RESULTS - The Power to End Poverty. CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment &am. The Huffington Post. Legal Affairs. July|August 2002 Misquoting Madison The father of the American Constitution famously warned that governance without information was "a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy. " But what kind of information was he talking about? By Michael Doyle James Madison is known as the tribune of open government and the philosophical father of the Freedom of Information Act. This spring, FOIA helped pry from the government's vaults some 11,000 previously secret pages of documents concerning energy policy deliberations by the Bush Administration. A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.
For the past half-century, no single quotation has been more commonly employed or judged more philosophically resonant, as Congress, courts, and scholars have sought to clarify the public's right to know what the government is up to. But everyone gets it wrong. And there the trail ends. But so what? Madison begone.