Moe Lane

I mean, it’s not that we don’t know why.

The solution to this quandary about transparency in the Obama White House is pretty easy to resolve…

Whether it’s responding to Congress, media questions, or FOIA requests, this administration is no better than its predecessor. The big difference: Obama is a Democrat. And because he is a Democrat, he’s gotten a pass from many of the civil liberty and good-government groups who spent years watching President Bush’s every move like a hawk.

(more…)

Mr. President? I’d like to introduce you to some of the American people that you are harming with your petulant closing of the White House to tours.

“The White House is our house! Please let us visit!”

(more…)

…now let it enforce it:

President Obama’s spokesman denounced the invalidation of the so-called ‘recess’ appointments as a “novel and unprecedented ruling,” adding that the decision has “no impact on the ongoing operations of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

“The decision is novel and unprecedented,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said during the press briefing. “It contradicts 150 years of practice by Democratic and Republican administrations. so, we respectfully but strongly disagree with the ruling.” Carney said that over 280 intrasession recess appointments have been made since 1867.

And, thanks to the Obama administration, that particular little political pressure valve may be clamped shut forever! All because Barack Obama and his team of N-dimensional geniuses apparently don’t know how to deal with people who will tell them “No.” (more…)

Which means, on a practical level, that it’s now four times as hard to get the White House to formally and officially shoot down your damfool idea.

The White House announced Wednesday that it was quadrupling the number of signatures required to receive an official response to a petition on its “We the People” website.

“Starting today, as we move into a second term, petitions must receive 100,000 signatures in 30 days in order to receive an official response from the Obama Administration,” White House director of digital strategy Macon Phillips wrote in a blog post. “This new threshold applies only to petitions created from this point forward and is not retroactively applied to ones that already exist.”

Sorry if I’m cynical about this, but then the only legitimate purpose that I can see for these things is to poke the Obama administration with a pointy stick on, say, legalizing marijuana. Or closing Gitmo. Or drone strikes.  Or anything else that the President does that broke a campaign promise, although admittedly a list of that is admittedly a bit more extensive than I first contemplated.  Anyway, if you think that Barack Obama is actually going to take any of these petitions seriously, well. Please don’t operate heavy machinery.

Moe Lane

…in the hopes that this time, it’ll be different.  The ‘Benjamin Button’ reference made by Ronald Brownstein below is in reference to the GOP’s policy agenda, which is pretty explicitly to reverse all of the catastrophic features of  President Obama’s policy agenda: the conceit is that we’re going to have the same debates over again.  And Brownstein reports that this is just fine with the White House, for some reason:

…early indications are that the White House also sees these Benjamin Button debates as a chance to take the offense for 2012—and to launch a renewed and reframed effort to contrast Obama’s vision of government’s role with that of the ascendant congressional Republicans. As David Axelrod, Obama’s chief White House political strategist, argued in a recent interview, 2010 unfolded largely as a referendum on Obama’s performance, but in 2012 “voters will be faced with a choice. And I view that as an opportunity.”

You know, there’s a meme called ‘framing’ which is very popular among my opposite numbers on the Left.  It’s a viciously seductive concept that derives its power from telling liberals and progressives, essentially, that the ongoing rejection of their pet policy positions by the public is due primarily because they simply haven’t found the right rhetorical angle with which to present their case.  I love framing.  I want to meet the person who managed to infect enough Democrats with this meme to reach the critical threshold of delusion, and send him/her a fruit basket.  Framing has done more for the GOP than anything else that I can think of, and stories like the above is why. (more…)

Background: as you may recall, starting last year (and as recently as May 2010) Joe Sestak began to allege that the White House offered him an administration job in exchange for dropping out of Pennsylvania’s Senate Democratic primary.  These allegations were both surprising and unsurprising; unsurprising because such offers are made all the time (something similar was reported in Colorado’s Democratic Senate primary), but surprising in that it’s usually not admitted to so openly, given that such offers are also against the law.  Sestak never recanted and the administration claimed that he had garbled a perfectly-innocent and certainly not felonious invitation by President Clinton to have Sestak serve on a commission.  As Sestak had gone on to win the primary anyway, it seemed obvious that all parties involved on the Democratic side of things wanted to let the matter drop quietly.  As for Clinton… he never said anything at all on the subject, really.

Until now (see also here).  Bill Clinton’s now denying that he tried to get Sestak out of the race. (more…)

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Hot Air readers. And Jules Crittenden readers.

Given that the Telegraph report came out yesterday afternoon, it’s amazing that they’ve gone to the trouble of denying it before the start of business hours today. And to Fox, no less.

The White House Monday dismissed reports that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel plans to leave his post after becoming frustrated with the Obama administration as “ludicrous.”

[snip]

In response to the report, a senior White House official told Fox News the “ludicrous” story was “not worth looking into.”

(more…)

Well, this is rich.  In the process of complaining about how the White House seems to be a combination of Mayor Daley and Barney Fife – no, really, that’s explicitly the two figures that they used – Politico reports:

One senior House Democrat said it is baffling “how one group of people can be so good at campaigning and so bad at politics” — a phrasing nearly identical to that of a second veteran House Democrat who expressed the same sentiment.

(H/T: Instapundit) No, what’s baffling is that there are senior members of the Democratic party who are actually still possessed of the belief that the Obama administration was good at campaigning. I mean, I understand that it’s necessary to keep telling the rank-and-file that they won in 2008 because their leader was off playing… what’s the phrase? “12-dimensional chess?”… but surely the higher-ups need to be firmly in contact with Reality Non-Unicorn, yes? (more…)

I was thinking over this entire “How do we admit that we offered Sestak a job in exchange for him dropping out of PA-SEN WITHOUT having a member of the White House staff copping to a felony?” problem that the Obama administration finds itself in -

Again. (more…)

Guess that means Gitmo is still hiring.

Choice of verb deliberate, there: Craig doesn’t seem all that happy to be pursuing a new and exciting career as a data point in the November unemployment statistics.

Tokyo (CNN) – In the first major shakeup among President Barack Obama’s senior staff, White House Counsel Greg Craig is being pushed out in favor of veteran Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer because of a dispute over plans to close the U.S. military prison in Cuba, CNN has learned.

The move will be announced by the White House in the coming days, a senior administration official and a senior Democratic source confirmed. The sources said it could be announced as early as Friday while the president will be in Japan starting a four-nation tour of Asia, which would make it likely the staff change will be overshadowed by other events.

Craig declined to comment and hang up when reached by CNN late Thursday evening.

Oh. I think somebody needs a hug.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

You know, new broom sweeping clean, cleaning out the Augean stables, generally showing those people in Washington who was who and what was what – and how there was going to be a new boss, with new rules and expectations on behavior. Well, meet the new boss:

During his first nine months in office, President Obama has quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings.

High-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, according to internal Democratic National Committee documents obtained by The Washington Times.

H/T: The Conservatives. Note that none of this is actually illegal; it’s just… business. This is how things are done in Washington. People willing to give money to politicians will be generally treated better by those politicians than people who are not, all other things being equal. This may disappoint supporters of the President, who (rightfully) may be feeling that they were at least misled about this administration’s intentions, but that’s not exactly the fault of everybody else. Of course, one way of controlling the underlying problem is by encouraging negative feedback mechanisms; for example, transparency…

Since taking office, Mr. Obama has pledged that his administration will be “the most open and transparent administration in history” and has agreed to make public the names of those who sign into White House visitor logs, though a request from The Times for logs that show visits from his top 45 bundlers has so far gone unfilled.

Requests for guest lists to various White House events, such as a recent cocktail reception surrounding the celebration of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ National Hockey League Stanley Cup victory or the Latin music concert last week, have also been denied repeatedly.

Ah. Never mind.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I just had this forwarded by one of my RS colleagues who doesn’t have time to hit this right now. Turns out that the Axelrod spam did happen, and it’s all because of all those awful “outside groups of all political stripes“:

After insisting no one was receiving unsolicited e-mails from the White House, officials reversed their story Monday night and blamed outside political groups for the unwanted messages from the tech-savvy operation.

White House online director Macon Phillips said in a blog posting that independent groups—he didn’t name them—had signed-up their members to receive regular updates about Obama’s projects, priorities and speeches.

The White House had consistently denied that anyone who hadn’t sought the e-mails had received them.

But we can believe them when they now tell us that it’s not their fault. Because nothing, of course, is ever this administration’s fault. (more…)