Just Another Brick in the Wall

Before I begin, I want to say that I was unable to locate any reference to this news story on Fox (it was probably displaced by the story about the M&M lover that tried to steal the Peanut M&M Statue). Therefore, I will break with tradition (at least my tradition) and post the link to the AP story (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080422/ap_on_go_pr_wh/whi
te_house_secrecy).

A quick summary: A liberal organization is suing the Bush Administration and the White House (how do you sue a building?) to force the Secret Service to release logs of people that have visited the White House. Although they claim that there is no way they could tell why they were at the White House from these logs, they insist the logs be released so 'We the People" can tell if religious conservatives are being offered too much access to the President. One of their arguments is that these records were used to investigate the Lewinski affair (I thought they said they couldn't tell from the logs why a person was at the White House?)

Anyhow, the case has already been through the lower courts that ruled the records must be released. It is now in the appeals court. What I find amazing is that when the judges pressed the plaintiff for some compromise solution that would ensure that the President would be able to seek council from whomever he chose while ensuring the public the transparency of government we must maintain, the lawyers were clueless. Not really, I'm sure. For them it's all or nothing.

Constitutional background (You can skip this paragraph if you understand the three branches of government and separation of powers):
We have three branches of government: Judicial (the courts), Legislative (Congress) and Executive (The White House - this also includes most everything else...DHS, FBI, CIA, etc.). According to the intent of the constitution, we have three branches to act as "Checks and Balances" - in other words, each branch is tasked with running their branch and making sure the other two branches don't run amok. In many ways, this has worked very well. In many ways, it has failed miserably. (A perfect example woild be to contrast the demands of this case with last years FBI raid on the Congressional offices of William Jefferson (D-LA) - if you need details, drop me a note.).


So, now it appears to be up to me to offer a compromise that we can all live with. I have two proposals:

Proposal #1: Release the documents, modified in such a way as to ensure that the White House can be absolutely certain that nobody can discern anything more than WHO visited. For example, At the end of each quarter (every three months), release a list of unique names of all persons that visited the White House. This should include all visitors - tourists, caterers, Official White House Dog Walkers, etc. No dates, times, titles, occurrences, purpose, duration, etc. If the only thing the lawyers want is a list of who visited, this should be enough. I'm sure they will be completely dissatisfied with this proposal, so let's visit Proposal #2.


Proposal #2: Apply this ruling equally to all branches and all levels of government. If you mandate the release of all visitors to the White House, then all visitors to Congressional and Judicial Offices should be released as well. This should also be applied to State Representatives, State Senators, Governors, County Council Members, Mayors, City Council Members, Dog Catchers, etc.

I'm so confident that this proposal would be so universally rejected that the law suit would be withdrawn within minutes of serious consideration by the Appeals Court.

While they're at it, why do they release the rest of the documents relating to the Assassination of J.F.K.?