White House To Open Up Visitor Logs
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Barack, Obama, Transparency
This was one of those inexplicable policy hold overs from the Bush administration that many Obama supporters shook their heads at.
But now, well, looks like they’ve found their way out of the woods.
The new policy would begin in mid-September. Electronic visitor logs maintained by the Secret Service would be released three to four months after visits are made. The disclosure would include who set up the meeting, where it was held and for how long. Specific requests for visits before Sept. 15 would be dealt with individually.Exceptions would be made in cases of national security, extreme confidentiality — such as a visit by a future Supreme Court nominee — and strictly personal visits to the first family, including daughters Malia and Sasha.
Do know that, although there have been some missteps, Obama’s has still been the most transparent administration in American history. But promises are a bitch, and supporters will hold you to each and every one of them.
Glad to see that this is one that the White House will ultimately keep.
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This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 and is filed under Barack, Obama, Transparency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 4th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Remember transparency ??
September 4th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Whoa, most transparent administration in American History?
Than blanket statement is big enough to cover Rhode Island. Care to explain how you came up with that one?
September 4th, 2009 at 11:15 am
What precisely distinguishes this as transparent when exceptions can be made at the adminisration’s discretion, as stated above?
This sounds to me exactly like “we’ll always be transparent, except when we don’t want to be, for reasons we deem sufficient.”
September 4th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Would you accept most transparent administration of the millenia?
That one holds true if you count the last few weeks of Clinton’s term.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
OK, I will buy that. But it is not saying much. A cinderblock wall is more transparent than the Bush Administration….
September 5th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Kranky – Exactly what level of transparency would satisfy you? Shall we eliminate security clearances altogether? Would that do it?
September 5th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
I don’t expect transparency. It’s not an important issue to me. I’m simply pointing out that if an admin grants itself the authority and discretion to leave peoples names off the visitor logs, that’s all they need to do if they want to get away with secret stuff, right?
That means that you can give the appearance of transparency to folks who aren’t really paying attention, and then just not be transparent when you don’t feel like it.
It’s not really that impressive a policy to say something like “most transparent ever” when you’ve given yourself all the opaqueness you need. It’s like putting a wax paper window on the ladies dressing room, and calling it most transparent ever. The peepers of the press and blogosphere still won’t get to see the forbidden naughty bits, will they?