The White House, aka OUR HOUSE, has made an agreement with the Secret Service that the White House visitor logs kept by the Secret Service will not be open to the public. WHAT?? The White House made a secret agreement with the Secret Service to keep records of who comes to the People's House a secret?? How did they manage this, you ask?? Hold on to your hats..tinfoil ones especially..this is a good one..really...
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According to the story on CNN
The five-page document dated May 17 declares that all entry and exit data on White House visitors belongs to the White House as presidential records rather than to the Secret Service as agency records.
Therefore, the agreement states, the material is not subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
Ok, so now anyone who visits the White House has the record of their visit disappear into the maw of "executive privilege"?
The memo last spring was signed by the White House and Secret Service the day after a Washington-based group asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on the Secret Service in a dispute over White House visitor logs for Abramoff.
The chief counsel to another Washington-based group suing to get Secret Service logs calls the creation of the memo "a political maneuver couched as a legal one."
"It appears the White House is actually manufacturing evidence to further its own agenda," Anne Weismann, a Justice Department lawyer for 19 years and now chief counsel to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Friday.
So, it looks like they are circling the wagons and preemptively preventing Congress, or anyone else, from finding out who goes to the White House. And why would that be??? Well, let's see if anyone has an idea.....
Federal courts will ultimately decide whether records identifying White House visitors and who they are going to see are under the legal control of the Secret Service or are presidential records publicly releasable solely at the discretion of the White House.
The Bush administration's agreement with the Secret Service "at a minimum will serve to postpone a final resolution of who these records belong to," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists.
"This memo reflects the Bush administration's view of American government, which is that the people's business should be conducted behind closed doors."
Hey, we pay for that house, we should know who goes in it and when and how long they stay anytime we want to know!! And isn't it handy that the Abramoff scandal got them all set for the Congressional subpeonas that are sure to be forthcoming.
Any one else as mad as I am about this?? That is MY HOUSE!! I pay for it!! And the salaries of the roaches occupying it at the moment, and I want to know who goes in and out, and why!! And I want to know NOW!!!
And anyone out there with the legal chops to offer an opinion on the propriety of the Secret Service concealing public records at the behest of the White House? I think it smells to high heaven.
Sorry for the rant, but this just ticked me off when I read it. Sorry if it's a repeat.. checked and didn't find one.