TRANSPARENCY: The Obama administration has directed defense officials to sign a pledge stating they will not share 2010 budget data with individuals outside the federal government.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Menard writes: “Obama must have learned from Bush’s experience with internal opposition cells at the CIA and State Department, with their damaging anonymous leaks of sensitive information. The military certainly includes some anti-budget-cut hawks, so Obama’s move makes political sense, but if Bush had even thought about something like this, details would have been leaked to and lambasted in the NY Times within hours.” Well, that’s one advantage of controlling the commanding heights of the media.