Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Yet another instance of the Obama administration stifling transparency the same way the Bush administration did, this time by denying access to White House visitor logs. We went through this with Bush when Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) requested those same logs and a federal judge ruled that they could not withhold them under FOIA. Now Obama is making the exact same argument Bush tried and failed with in order to keep the public from knowing about visits by coal company executives to the White House.
"The Obama administration has now taken exactly the same position as the Bush administration, telling us the visitor logs are presidential records," said Anne Weismann, the legal counsel for CREW. "I don't see how you can keep people from knowing who visits the White House and adhere to a policy of openness and transparency. The discrepancy between the rhetoric and the policy is especially great."
And the excuses offered by the White House just don't cut it.
Asked about the issue by reporters, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said today that the administration's policy regarding the release of the logs is under review."The policy -- as you know, and I think many of you know, this has involved -- visitor logs have been involved in some litigation dating back to sometime in 2006," Gibbs said. "The White House is reviewing that policy based on some of that litigation."
Gibbs declined to say when the review would be completed, but said it is being conducted by the White House counsel's office and "other people."
"The goal is, and I think the president underscored his commitment to transparency on his first full day in office," Gibbs said. "This is not a contest between this administration or that administration or any administration. It's to uphold the principle of open government."
If the goal is to uphold the principle of open government, the documents would have been turned over. The response from the administration to the FOIA request repeats that they are taking the exact same position Bush did, that visitor logs are "presidential records" rather than "agency records" and therefore exempt from FOIA.
And while the administration notes that this issue is currently a matter of litigation, it does not note that a federal judge has already ruled on the issue and said that those visitor logs are public records and must be made public under FOIA. That ruling is being appealed and the Obama administration is taking the same position that Bush did. This isn't a matter of it being "under review," the Obama administration has already declared its position in that court case.
On his first day in office, Obama issued an executive order that agencies must process FOIA requests with a focus on more transparency and accountability. His actions since then, however, show just how empty those orders were.
Politics
Comments
Really effing disappointing. How can he get some things so right and others so terribly wrong?
Posted by: Satcomguy | June 17, 2009 10:20 AM
Really effing disappointing. How can he get some things so right and others so terribly wrong?
Posted by: Satcomguy | June 17, 2009 10:25 AM
Lifted from Greenwald's latest post:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/17/transparency/index.html
"My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government" -- Barack Obama, January 28, 2009
"All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government" -- Barack Obama, January 21, 2009
Words are pretty. Obama has been better than Bush in the same way that putrid is better than despicable IMO.
Posted by: Johnny Clamboat | June 17, 2009 10:28 AM
Really effing disappointing. How can he get some things so right and others so terribly wrong?
Posted by: Satcomguy | June 17, 2009 10:28 AM
Sorry about the triple post (I really should read those WARNING dialog boxes more carefully!).
Posted by: Satcomguy | June 17, 2009 10:31 AM
*sigh*
Posted by: dogmeatIB | June 17, 2009 12:35 PM
"Liar in Chief" appears to be a permanent part of the job title, not just associated with a particular occupant of the office.
Pity that. I had actually hoped for better, but it's clear that Obama is simply another liar who's managed to lie his way to the top.
Posted by: usagi | June 17, 2009 3:57 PM
If people want change they must stop waiting for Obama to do more than making pretty speechs.
Posted by: Paen | June 17, 2009 4:45 PM
I repeat: Can we fast-forward to the part where McCain bites Obama's finger off and falls into the volcano?
Posted by: Azkyroth | June 17, 2009 4:51 PM
Ed,
I'm hoping the Obama administration is continuing the Bush arguments in order to test them in court and establish precedents against the policies.
If Obama just ends or reverses Bush policies, that would be an immediate result, but a temporary one. There'd be nothing to prevent a future president from reenacting the Bush policies or using the Bush/Cheney theories of governance.
Posted by: Jon H | June 17, 2009 6:47 PM
This is stupid and embarrassing. I can make sense of some of Obama's continuations of Bush policies as a way of keeping a lid on concrete, detailed evidence of Bush administration crimes to avoid being forced to carry out politically difficult investigations and prosecutions. But this policy has nothing to do with all that. This is just stupid. And I'll bet the Obama administration will quietly go along with the FOI request and release that information in a few weeks or months - which makes the hemming and hawing over this right now even stupider.
Posted by: G Felis | June 18, 2009 1:15 AM