Obama Keeps A Campaign Promise

During the 2008 campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama promised his administration would be more open and transparent than the extremely secretive Bush administration. Yesterday, steps were taken to keep that promise.

Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and reform, had promised to make records of White House visitors available to the public beginning in December. However, they have beat that deadline by a month. The records for January 20 through July 31 have now been posted at www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/disclosures/visitor-records.

The records released so far stop at the end of July, because the records are only released once they are 90 days old. I don't know why a three-month delay is necessary, but that is still a quantum-leap better than the Bush administration. At least, the information is being released.

Eisen said, "We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history not only by opening the doors of the White House to more Americans, but by shining a light on the business conducted inside it. Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process."

The first release contained some pretty famous names -- William Ayers, Michael Jordan, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright and R. Kelly. But before you get excited, these were not the famous people associated with those names. Eisen said, "The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House."

I applaud President Obama for keeping this important campaign promise.

Bush Loses Another Court Fight

In an effort to keep secret the visitors who have access to the president, President Bush had ordered the Secret Service to turn the visitor logs they kept over to the White House. He then declared those logs to be presidential papers and thus not subject to public records requests.

He used this ploy to deny requests of records of visits to the White House by conservative evangelists and lobbyist Jack Abramoff. It is believed these records would show the White House has been lying about the number of these visits.

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth shot down Bush's flawed argument. He ruled that the visitor logs were not presidential papers, but were instead Secret Service documents. Secret Service papers and logs are subject to public records requests.

The judge, a Reagan appointee, ordered that the records regarding the evangelists' visits be released. The request for the Abramoff records is still pending, but they cannot be destroyed since they are also Secret Service records. Judge Lambreth will also be presiding over that case, so it is expected the White House will also be ordered to release those records.

The White House is considering an appeal, but after this decision by a conservative judge it is doubtful the decision will be overturned.

Bit by bit, the courts are starting to rein in the lawless behavior of the Bush administration.