On Tuesday, the CEO of C-Span sent a letter to Congress requesting an open, televised forum for the health care debate, pursuant to the campaign promises made by President Obama.

We thought it was a great idea:

Not only should the health care sessions be open for viewing by the American public, but so too should every meeting or deliberation regarding every bill that is to become law. While it may be impossible to show everything on television, the internet makes it possible to archive every single second of what goes on in Congress.

The fourth estate is the final cross-check of our system, and it looks like the CEO of C-SPAN wants to do just that.

A few SHTF readers agreed with what we proposed, but overall there was a sense of doubt that anything would come of it, as evidenced by the comments:

Patrick: “Pardon my French, but not a FU@%ING chance!”

Rick Blaine: “Yeah…I’ll believe this one after watching it on TV, or the internet, for more than 10 minutes. I’m with Patrick.”

Scott: “Hey, they wanna track and trace us…..what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

How right the sentiment of our contributors was. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is visibly frustrated with questioning by the White House press corp in regards to C-Span’s request.

The following video is Part 1 of 2 of the questioning over a two day period:

Mr. Gibbs gets very defensive and argumentative when confronted by the (mainstream) press, which, on this occasion seems to finally be doing their jobs.

It was a simple question: Where does the President stand on transparency?

Mr. Gibbs had no answer, other than to say he had not read the letter. Really, the letter is irrelevant.

They had to have known this question was coming, and the ONLY appropriate answer would have been, “The President has urged Congressional leaders to allow cameras and microphones for all proceedings, debates and meetings going forward.”

Is that too much to ask? Really. Is it too much to ask?

Part 2 of 2, the following day:

Mr. Gibbs again refuses to answer the question when pressed and refers reporters to the prior day’s transcript, which as we included above, clearly shows Mr. Gibbs dodging the question and failing to answer it.

Whether you are a democrat, republican or currently without Party, you should be outraged.

When deals are made behind closed doors, outside of the view of the American public, then we’ve got a problem.

The only Change we’ve had since Mr. Obama took office is that an ass has replaced the elephant. Other than that, it’s business as usual.

The only way to save this country is to throw out 99% of Congress and re-elect a new President in 2012.

The American people don’t seem to have gotten to the point of being outraged enough to clean house, so on this particular issue, we’ll repeat what Patrick said, “Pardon my French, but not a FU@%ING chance!“