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"No one will know until this is actually in place how it works," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., of the Senate's slapdash financial reform bill. He ought to know: He co-sponsored the bill along with Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. Two weeks after its passage, we've already seen one outrageous result: Thanks to an unnoticed provision of the bill, the Securities and Exchange Commission is now declaring itself exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests, one of the bulwarks of government transparency.

Perhaps no other government agency has seen so many high-profile failures in recent years as the SEC. The regulatory agency failed to anticipate the collapse of insurance behemoth AIG, and it whiffed on the related mortgage securities free-for-all that wrecked the economy, ...