Gretchen's Take: Stifling a freedom the US was built on

Reporters challenge the government's broken Freedom of Information Act system

This country was founded on freedoms ... and one of those is for people in this great nation to know how the government is run. We, after all, are paying the bills.

So if you've paid attention at all to the hearings on Capitol Hill this week about the problems journalists have had time and time again trying to get information from our government -- information not classified -- and going through all the right requests -- you may start to wonder if one of the basic tenets this country was founded on is changing.

Sharyl Atkisson -- formerly of CBS news testified that FOIA -- the Freedom Of Information Act -- "is a broken system not by accident but by design." Another reporter said the Pentagon only agreed to give up documents he had requested many times -- if he promised never to submit another FOIA request! Really?

The argument supporting why there's such a long delay in getting docs out to journalists is that because of agency budget cuts there simply aren't enough people to do the job. Do you agree with that? And more importantly, after these hearings do you think anything will change?