Its the people's White House and evidently a judge agreed with that today. Bush isn't going to like that and it makes me friggin giddy don't ya know? From the AP writeup:
White House visitor logs are public documents, a federal judge ruled Monday, rejecting a legal strategy that the Bush administration had hoped would get around public records laws and let them keep their guests a secret.
The Secret Service has historically kept the logs within their sphere of control, that is until BushCo came into town. What is Bush trying to hide from us?
The visitations of neocon religious leaders. LOL. I was thinking Jeff Gannon's visits my dear reader. CREW, the big watchdog group out of DC had requested the records and had to pay lawyers to take the FOIA request all the way to court. Such bullshit.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered the S.S. to "turn over visitor logs regarding nine conservative religious commentators, including James Dobson, Gary Bauer and Jerry Falwell".
Praise Jesus!
In a second case, the White House is seeking to destroy visitor logs of the visits of Jack Abramoff. Yes, that Jack Abramoff! The W.H. went so far as to "have the case moved to another judge by consolidating it with a similar lawsuit before U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer, an appointee of President Bush".
CREW is also the party involved in this case as well. On Monday, Judge Collyer and Judge Lamberth agreed to consolidate the two Abramoff-related cases before Lamberth, even though Collyer in accordance with long-standing courthouse practice would have dealt with both because the case she was hearing was the older of the two.
Lamberth hates secrecy according to the AP writeup. Isn't that friggin grand?
Tags: White House visitor logs, Abramoff, James Dobson,