Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The White House has released a very partial list of visitors to the White House over the first 9 months of the Obama administration. The list includes Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, George Soros and lots and lots of executives from the oil and banking industries.
The White House on Friday released a small list of visitors to the White House since President Barack Obama took office in January, including lobbyists, business executives, activists and celebrities.No previous administration has released such a list, though the information out so far is incomplete. Only about 110 names --and 481 visits --out of the hundreds of thousands who have visited the Obama White House were made public.
But here's the problem:
Like the Bush administration before it, Obama is arguing that any release is voluntary, not required by law, despite two federal court rulings to the contrary.Under the Obama White House's policy, most names of visitors from Inauguration Day in January through the end of September will never be released. The White House says it plans to release most of the names of visitors from October on, and that release is due near the end of the year. There are limitations there as well, including potential Supreme Court nominees, personal guests of the First Family, and certain security officials.
This makes no sense at all. If they're going to release the identities of most who visited before October, why not release those who visited up to that point? The source of the information, the White House visitor logs, is exactly the same in both cases. And as MSNBC correctly said, two courts have now ruled that those logs are under the domain of FOIA and therefore publicly available.
That doesn't mean the White House has to put up a website with all those names on it, but it does mean that if someone files a FOIA request they have to comply with it unless it falls into one of the specific exemptions found in that law. And that is precisely what they are fighting against in appeals of those rulings, just as the Bush administration did before them.
And this from the president who promised the most transparent administration in history.
Politics
Comments
WorldNutDaily is all over it with one of their famous "exclusive" scoops. Be afraid whites, Obama is meeting with Islamic black-power terrorists! The end is surely near.
Posted by: Abby Normal | November 2, 2009 10:40 AM
William Ayers and Jeremiah “God Damn Amerika” Wright were n the list I see .. but it’s not the Ayers and Wright everyone thinks … yeah right!
Anyone seriously stupid enough to think that a former low level Chicago machine foot soldier like BHO was going to transcend the river of shit he cut his teeth on deserves to have their hearts broken.
Posted by: Mike H | November 2, 2009 11:21 AM
Ed:
It's simple. They can't release the visitor logs because they include Mr. Farrah and the entire staff of WND who are, in reality, Kenyanlizardpeople who are pulling off the biggest disinformation campaign in history.
Mike H.:
This:
"Anyone seriously stupid enough to think that a former low level Chicago machine foot soldier like BHO was going to transcend the river of shit he cut his teeth on deserves to have their hearts broken."
caused me to do some soul searching. I think that after thinking on it for some time I have the correct reply. Fuck you, asshole.
Posted by: democommie | November 2, 2009 11:27 AM
I'm sure you've seen by now that the famous names on the list are not the actual famous people they are most commonly associated with. The list included all the people who go on the White House Tour open to the general public, and they only coincidentally share the names of their famous bearers.
I don't know quite what the point of that was, but they seemed delighted to tease the right-wing blogs and media outlets into fevered conspiracy-mongering and righteous crowing before informing them of the mistaken identities.
Or wait, maybe that WAS the point ...
Posted by: Jeff Hebert | November 2, 2009 11:28 AM
democommie, you could have just quoted me some of your scripture:
“and he who shall rise from a cesspool of bribery, corruption, graft, and intimidation in the name of the most holy prophet Tammany shall lead the people into a new era of misery and decline. So sayeth the Lord”
The two greatest things about Obamas election is that he’s going to do in 2 short years what it took liberals decades do to: marginalize themselves and completely turn off the electorate and this country will never be guilted into electing a black politician ever again.
How sweet it is.
Posted by: Mike H | November 2, 2009 11:58 AM
Posted by: James Hanley | November 2, 2009 12:08 PM
Mike H said:
How sweet it is.
I know what you mean- I certainly can't wait until we forget all that guilt and just get back to being terrified into electing rich white guys again.
Posted by: Jeremy S | November 2, 2009 12:08 PM
Mike H said:
Well, that's the paraphrase, anyway.Posted by: kehrsam | November 2, 2009 12:20 PM
I know what you mean- I certainly can't wait until we forget all that guilt and just get back to being terrified into electing rich white guys again.
And I certainly can’t wait until we elect people who have demonstrated a marginal degree of competency regardless of ethnicity. What a concept!
Posted by: Mike H | November 2, 2009 12:22 PM
Mike H. stated:
Speaking on behalf of myself. The analysis I developed to grade the candidates had no designated factor for either guilt or race. I did consider factors like: emotional intelligence, raw intelligence, management skills, honesty, integrity, fealty to Constitutional principles, and many others.
Mike H. appears to be one of those guys with a less than average penis size, for a white guy, who attempts to get people to hate others because of his own inadequacy and inability to succeed in life in spite of living in a free country with ample opportunities.
I now regret the analysis I did prior to my decision on whom to vote for in last year's election. I should have also considered the entertainment value experiencing racist impotency in full display. Perhaps WorldNetDaily will start advertising a Viagra-like product targeted towards racist impotency during a black President's reign. I think it'd be a hit product.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 2, 2009 12:24 PM
I did consider factors like: emotional intelligence, raw intelligence, management skills, honesty, integrity, fealty to Constitutional principles, and many others.
You weighed all these and still voted for Obama? Wow, can we say shit for brains!
Posted by: Mike H | November 2, 2009 12:34 PM
You tell 'em Mike H! Stick it to people who are different than you! Woo! That'll teach him for not voting for the guy who was a maverick that just happened to stand for everything the not-mavericks stand for, who walked into a room with an anti-torture bill then walked out with a torture bill and claimed it as a victory, and who put Palin one heartbeat away from the Presidency!
Posted by: Modusoperandi | November 2, 2009 12:54 PM
Mike H. stated:
I don't think we can given I doubt you could find another regular contributor in this forum to agree with you on that matter. We kind of prefer and rely on empirical evidence around here to make winning arguments, being a ScienceBlog forum and all. So good luck with that we part.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 2, 2009 1:01 PM
@Mike H:
Yeah, clearly you're the only person commenting here with a clear grasp of the issues...
...So much easier to keep a straight face on the internet.
Posted by: Dan L. | November 2, 2009 1:10 PM
Mike H.:
Excuse me for dismissing you so tersely. What I should have said is:
Fuck you, you brain dead, piece of shit, racist asshole.
I think Michael Heath's pretty much got it right about your lack of common cause with anyone who's a regular on this blog. Folks here think, "We the people..."; you think, "I, the dumbfuck...".
I must say that I really prefer dickheads like you--who are so stupid that they think their honesty about their racism is noble--as compared to dickheads like C2 who imagine that their faux scholarship will give them sort of cover.
It is unkind of folks to say that you have a small penis; I'm sure that you do, but it's unkind of them to say so.
Posted by: democommie | November 2, 2009 2:01 PM
Posted by: James Hanley | November 2, 2009 2:11 PM
That's so true. I really hope we stop electing people like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee just because they're white.
Posted by: Sean Michael | November 2, 2009 2:42 PM
"Guilted into voting for a black man.'
How does that work? I mean, it's a secret ballot! Even if you could guilt me into saying one thing in public, once I get into the voting booth, I can do whatever I want without recrimination.
Posted by: Scott Hanley | November 2, 2009 3:10 PM
Mike H takes great delight in trying to get himself ban from various science blogs, an odd hobby at which he’s been moderately successful. I wouldn't waste my time replying to him.
Posted by: Abby Normal | November 2, 2009 3:26 PM
Wow, this post is a massive FAIL on all levels.
First, to call Obama a liberal is laughable. In fact, most of the flak Obama is taking is do to the fact that his stances on issues have been too moderate or because he has continued Bush's conservative, authoritarian positions.
Second, to argue that liberals are marginalized or marginalizing themselves is equally amusing given the 18-20% self professed "Republican" identifiers we've been seeing in recent polls. Projecting a little?
Finally, as has been pointed out already, "guilting" someone to vote for a candidate in a secret ballot election is ... hey, three for three, laughable. What you normally see in a "guilt" vote is people who insist they will vote for the candidate in polls and then fail to do so in the general election.
I hate to break it to you, but Obama was the better candidate. His economic policies were supported by over 80% of economists. He had a more comprehensive approach to the major issues facing our country, foreign and domestic. His opponent couldn't run a proper campaign (picking Palin, "suspending" the debate, etc.) which suggested his presidency likely would have been a train-wreck.
In the end, democommie is right.
Posted by: dogmeatib | November 2, 2009 5:28 PM
Mike H,
In addition to being an ass, you are also a bad writer. "[T]ranscend the river of shit he cut his teeth on"? Seriously? How the fuck could someone cut his or her teeth on a river of anything, much less a river of something as gooey and amorphous as shit?
Posted by: Douglas McClean | November 2, 2009 6:13 PM
But didn't you think the new software they're using to put up the visitor logs was cool? (Yes, I am indirectly involved with the company that provides the service; you've seen it before with the nominations.)
My idealistic guess for not publishing Jan-Oct is either someone modestly embarrassing, or they're too lazy to type it all up. Yeah, not likely, but I can hope. I'd still call it progress.
Posted by: JustaTech | November 2, 2009 6:53 PM
David Frum, an ex-White House staffer for W. has a dissenting opinion on this topic. He basically argues such transparency wastes the time of staffers to insure the log books can't politically harm the President while meeting the White House would prefer be covert will merely be done outside the complex.
I think Mr. Frum has an arguable point. However, I think the optimal response is that voters need to grow up and stop extending their arguments beyond reason. We should demand transparency, and at the same time, not start hyperventilating every time an administration meets with groups or people we oppose.
I like transparency where I'll provide one example. It was clear during the development of the Bush Energy Bill that the White House was in no way interested in serving the national interest but instead looking to pay back its financial constituents by crafting a bill that kept their end-prices high, input pricing like access to resources low, tax subsidies to protect profit margins enough to keep competitors out, and a regulatory environment that also helped keep competitors out.
On the other hand, Mr. Frum argues such meetings will subsequently take place elsewhere if log books are perfectly transparent or least more so. I'd would then argue we need systems in place that provide transparency to all meetings by all government officials regardless of their location. Analogous to how we have video recorders in cop cars.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 3, 2009 8:47 AM
"out of the hundreds of thousands"
Holy cow that is some serious traffic in 9 months.
Posted by: MarkusR | November 3, 2009 11:16 PM