Robert Gibbs

The Washington Post reports: 

Matt Negrin of Politico picks up on this gem from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is angry that Senator Jim DeMint is going to require a Senate clerk to spend 12 whole hours reading the START arms deal aloud before senators vote on it. Says Obama's spokesman in a statement:

At a White House press briefing today, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about the Treasury Department's review of Austan Goolsbee's comments on Koch Industries' tax status. Gibbs says Goolsbee's comments were "not in any way based on any review of tax filings," and added: "I don't think he'd use that example or examples like that in the future. And I think the fact that he was wrong might also give you an indication that what is ultimately being alleged isn't the case."

According to Reuters, the Obama administration plans to tackle the growing deficit ... but not yet. That will come after the 2010 midterm election in November, according to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs:

The mainstream liberal media: "Primary night yields good news for President Obama and Democrats" (John F. Harris, Politico).

Washington was hot today, and Democrats were tearing at each other's hair like a clatch of tween frenemies fighting for the front row at a Justin Bieber mall appearance.

First, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs seemed to strike out of the blue, telling The Hill:

"I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

"Former Gitmo detainee turned Taliban leader threatens Afghan elders."

Max Boot talks with Charlie Rose about General David Petraeus's mission in Afghanistan.

It's definitely going to take Obama's superior conflict management skills to smooth this over. Democrats are not-so-privately fuming over Robert Gibbs' admission on "Meet the Press" this week that Dems could lose the House.

"How could [Gibbs] know what is going on in our districts?" Pelosi told her members in the caucus meeting in the basement of the Capitol Tuesday night. "Some may weigh his words more than others. We have made our disagreement known to the White House."...

Robert Gibbs declined to answer repeated questions today about Obama's use of the offensive term, "teabagger" to refer to Tea Party activists, as reported in Jonathan Alter's new book, "The Promise: President Obama, Year One."

"I barely have enough time to read my briefing books," Gibbs told reporters at today's press briefing. "I have not read the book."

As he tried to move on, CBS' Chip Reid offered to laughter: "You only have to read one word."

Asked again later in the briefing, Gibbs parried, but finally promied to report back:

The Dow fell nearly 1,000 points today and MSNBC's Savannah Guthrie informed White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs of it at the daily press briefing. Her question was the first he had heard of it, and he answered the question with generalities about the "Treasury monitoring Europe and the Greek crisis," according to reporter David Corn, who was at the briefing.

From Politico's report on reporters' frustration with White House secrecy:

A few days later, Gibbs said at one of his briefings, “This is the most transparent administration in the history of our country.”

Peals of laughter broke out in the briefing room.

That happened on April 19. 

I imagine that some reporters laughed because of the White House's stingy and selective doling out of scoops--shockingly, the New York Times has a special relationship with Obama--and the fact that Obama "has severely cut back the informal exchanges with the press pool." Politico reports that "Bill Clinton did 252 such Q&A sessions—an average of one every weekday. Bush did 147. Obama did 46, according to Towson University Professor Martha Kumar."

But the administration's stonewalling on national security matters is much worse.

Here's a headline from April 27: "Administration only partially complies with Ft. Hood subpoenas."

Perhaps the most egregious example of stonewalling is the secrecy surrounding Gitmo detainees. As Steve Hayes reported last month: