Issa and FOIA

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has asked "for the names of hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens, business executives, journalists and others who have requested copies of federal government documents in recent years."

According to the New York Times article, Issa "says he wants to make sure agencies respond in a timely fashion to Freedom of Information Act requests and do not delay them out of political considerations."

“Our interest is not in the private citizens who make the requests,” said Kurt Bardella, a spokesman for Mr. Issa. “We are looking at government responses to these Freedom of Information requests and the only way to measure that is to tally all that information.”

Even if you take Issa at his word -- and I find it hard to do so -- what is it about some lawmakers (mostly Republicans, but then there's Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein) that makes them so tone-deaf to the implications of their actions for the privacy of ordinary citizens?