Obama Spokesman Accidentally Admits Change.gov WAS a political website…

We posted this in December:

Golly wow, Barack Obama isn’t wasting time is he? He has created a change.gov website to facilitate his transition to begin his run for 2012.

Them Michelle Malkin discovered this:

The FOIA documents sent to Lance O., which he forwarded to me, reveal that the GSA initially rejected Obama’s application for “Change.gov.” On Oct. 21, Peter Alterman, Deputy Associate Administrator of Technology Strategy at the GSA, denied the Obama campaign’s request for a government domain because:

1) It would be a a violation of the government’s naming conventions (too generic); and

2) using ‘change’ in the domain name would be political, since it was the trademark slogan of the Obama campaign.

The day after the election, on Nov. 5, GSA Chief Information Officer Casey Coleman overruled Alterman after apparently receiving a waiver from Chris Lu, Executive Director of Obama’s Transition Project. As reader Lance discovered through his FOIA request, Ms. Coleman did not elaborate on the granting of this waiver except to say that she had “determined that it is in the best interest of the Federal Government to register the subject domain name.”

As another GSA official who facilitated the convenient change in policy regarding change.gov exulted to the Obama campaign after the domain was granted, “Rock and roll!”

The Obama Seal

To cut a long story short, the White House Director of New Media finally (accidentally) admitted it was a campaign website. Since it was a campaign website, why should our tax dollars have been used to fund it ? Anyway WaPo

This is uncharted territory,” said Macon Phillips, White House director of new media, which was a midlevel position in previous administrations but has been boosted by Obama to a “special assistant to the president.”

“WhiteHouse.gov,” Phillips said, “is not like BarackObama.com or Change.gov. We’re not running a campaign anymore. To us here, WhiteHouse.gov is not just a Web site. The new programs that we will roll out are more than just URLs. They are new ways to engage with citizens. Stay tuned.”

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