After Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett was alerted last week by some of his viewers that they had received unsolicited emails from the WH, Garrett asked WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about it on Thursday, raising privacy issues. (As it happens, Garrett was later joined by the ACLU, of all groups. Who would have thought the very liberal ACLU and rather conservative Fox News would be on the same side of an issue? Go figure).

Gibbs gave one of his somewhat snarky and arrogant NON-answers and then basically stonewalled Garrett for the next few days as Garrett pursued trying to find out how the WH obtained people's private email addresses and why it was sending them unsolicited emails, mainly about ObamaCare.

Now, finally, the White House has provided its version of what happened. Politico.com's Mike Allen reports that WH spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a statement Sunday night: “We are implementing measures to make subscribing to emails clearer, including preventing advocacy organizations from signing people up to our lists without their permission when they deliver petition signatures and other messages on individual's behalf.” (Italics added for emphasis.)

So, the issue was raised on Thursday and surely could have been answered by someone by sometime Friday but the answer wasn't provided until late Sunday night. Talk about being able to claim credit for finally responding while at the same time trying to bury your answer out of the normal news cycle!

And did you notice that, once again, it's not the White House's fault? Heaven forbid that this White House should ever admit it made a mistake, much less actually and intentionally did something wrong. No, no, no, this time people's private email addresses were obviously but inadvertently obtained by the WH because, while these people didn't specifically opt in to receiving WH emails, they had apparently signed some kind of petition, letter, etc., etc., at some time or other, which some third party organizations (vague and kind of hard to trace, eh?) sent to the WH. So, it was these appropriately amorphous third party organizations' fault, you see -- NOT US! (What kind of ether do these people breathe -- and do they think if they pump enough of it into the news cycle that we will inhale it, too?)

Awww, now see, here I thought I was so "special" because I got three -- yes, THREE -- unsolicited emails from the WH, one from Obama and two from Axelrod. I was just SURE that I had earned a place on SOME kind of WH "enemies" list. Oh darn! Well, guess I'll just have to keep trying.

Just as I can't get over Axelrod's appearance somehow reminding me of a door-to-door salesman of some kind (Fuller brushes? Electrolux vacuums?), Gibbs reminds me of the overly large, overly self-important, overly privileged and overly boorish frat boy I sometimes ran across during my college days. You know the guy -- his daddy made sure he got into the right school and the right fraternity, had the right kind of clothes, the right kind of car and plenty of money, etc., but his daddy couldn't disguise the fact that his little boy wasn't quite as smart as he was arrogant and wasn't quite as polished as he was just plain used to being privileged and pampered.

You may also remember that the WH recently asked Americans to notify it of any "fishy" info, mainly pertaining to health care/insurance reform, that their family, friends or neighbors might casually mention or repeat. Well, the only thing "fishy" to me about the WH explanation of this latest apparent disregard for citizen privacy is that most of the organizations for and with which I've signed petitions, letters, etc., have specifically (in accordance with privacy and anti-spamming laws) stated that your email address may be requested for purposes of notifying you that your petition has been sent or for sending a copy of your letter back to you, etc., but that it will not be published or released to anyone else.

So, how do you explain that, Mr. White House Spokesperson? Anyone?

AFTERTHOUGHT: A poster named roxsteady claimed on Politico.com that Major Garrett and Fox News (I guess, along with the ACLU) were idiots for raising the question of the WH sending unsolicited emails to citizens and sought to excuse the WH by saying it is simply known as SPAM.

But isn't SPAM wrong, even illegal? Why, I think there are even LAWS.....and stuff.....against it. So, roxsteady, are you saying that Garrett, Fox News, etc., are idiots for even asking the questions, but the WH is okay for spamming its citizens, if in fact that's ALL it's doing?

Get a grip and stop excusing the Obama White House for everything. After all, normally AFTER they're CAUGHT, they do enough of that for themselves, usually by blaming someone -- and sometimes it seems, anyone -- else!

Politico.com's Roger Simon wrote an article, posted today, entitled: Judd Gregg's Profile in Petulance. Herewith, my reply:

Oh, please! Roger Simon has obviously been invited to the White House and drank some Obama Kool-Aid while there. Either that, or he just gullibly accepts the White House spin on yet another set of mistakes by Team Obama.

For Team Obama to have run one of the most disciplined, on message, as well as secretive, and successful campaigns ever, they do seem to have their political appointee vetting problems. Either they pick Democrats who are tax, nanny, conflict of interest, or federal investigation challenged, or they pick Republicans who they think they can use as political cover or perhaps roll over on their principles.

It was Obama, in another of his shows of bipartisanship, who reached out to Gregg, not the other way around, and I defy anyone to prove - yes, I said prove, not just allege or gossip - otherwise. And who better to reach out to than not only a Republican but also one known to be a fiscal hawk? If the deal had worked out, think how much political "cover" Obama could have milked out of that appointment!

But the reason I said this was another of Obama's "shows" of bipartisanship is because that's all he's done. He basically wants bipartisanship, or at least the show of it, for political cover, not for real solutions. He's "talked" bipartisanship (almost incessantly), but he hasn't "practiced" it. It's not real bipartisanship to invite Republicans to the White House, or to travel the short distance to Capitol Hill to see them, only to remind them that you won and that you, along with a liberal Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, can trump them on your legislative agenda. It's not real bipartisanship to listen to what Republicans earnestly put forward as recommendations to help, say, with the stimulus plan, but then not direct the Congress - your own Democratically controlled Congress - to incorporate more of them into pending legislation. And it's not real bipartisanship to preach working across the aisle, then trash Republicans as obstructionists to the Democratic faithful gathered at their annual House Retreat at a Virginia resort and spa, many of the same House Democrats who excluded House Republicans from having any input into your so-called stimulus plan.

Perhaps Obama acted in good faith in offering the job to Gregg and perhaps Gregg also acted in good faith in accepting it, each really thinking they could work together. Let's think the best for a change and give both men the benefit of the doubt, shall we? But when, after accepting the nomination, Gregg was faced with some Congressional Democrats' paranoia that he might "rig" the Census, plus Rahm "Run Amok" Emanuel's power grab to therefore run the Census out of the White House, and since conducting the Census is one of the main functions of the Commerce Secretary and has been for a long, long time, I think Gregg made the only principled decision he could make - and that was to withdraw.

At least, in doing so, Gregg was much more gracious in accepting "the mistake" as his own and not Obama's, while the Obama White House chose to spin it as inexplicable why Gregg "sought the nomination" to only then "suddenly withdraw" and pretended not to understand why, when they had taken one of the main functions he was supposed to perform away from him, Gregg realized he could not be a "team player" in such a White House. Duh! I guess Gregg realized he wanted to be more than just "show" bipartisan window dressing, and I can't blame him for that.

So, let's see, so far the wonderful and infallible Team Obama has offered Commerce Secretary to one of their own, Democrat Bill Richardson, evidently without being aware that his involvement in a federal prosecution might present some nomination confirmation problems, and to a Republican who they knew was a strong fiscal conservative and who they wanted to strip of one of his major functions before he was even confirmed, and they just can't understand why they're having problems? Again, duh!

Maybe they're not as smart as they thought they were. Maybe there really is a big difference between campaigning and promising, and governing and actually performing. In any case, it will be interesting to see who they come up with to offer the Commerce job to next.

Hey, Bill Clinton knows a lot about commerce! He's out there, making millions hand over fist from countries his ethically challenged wife may have to deal with as Obama's Secretary of State. Maybe Barack will learn what Bill learned - well, sort of - that secretaries, and even interns, can get you in a whole lot of trouble. We'll see.

Politico.com recently published an article reviewing some of the presidential candidates' "mistakes." My reply to Politico.com:

Wait a minute, Politico.com. You teamed up with who for this article? Politifact, which is tied to the very liberal St. Petersburg Times? Well, that kind of shoots your objectivity and credibility in the foot right there.

But, aside from that, I also noticed that, as relatively short as your article was, McCain was tagged more than Obama, both in terms of the number of times mentioned and in terms of McCain's statements being "pants-on-fire wrong" (such a cute descriptor) but Obama's only being either "not totally true," "untrue," or "false."

Any of us who are even halfway critical thinkers (instead of idol worshipers, like the mainstream media -- and now maybe Politico.com as well) and who have paid the least attention to both Obama's and McCain's campaigns have seen McCain make some missteps and occasionally overreach, sure, but have also seen Obama say some just plain dumb, naive and downright stupid things: 58 states? Seeing ghosts in a crowd? Meet unconditionally with the likes of Ahmadinejad? Admit he was a 20-year member in a church but claiming to be totally unaware that it and its preacher (his own personal mentor and substitute father figure) were blatantly anti-American and racist? Unilaterally bomb in Pakistan whether our nuclear-armed ally agreed or not? I suppose all of these types of things by Obama have just been "mistakes" or examples of his "misspeaking"? I don't think so. And I could go on -- there's quite a list by now, which continues to grow almost daily -- but I think I've made my point.

I could go on with many other examples, but I will stop now and end by saying that what you really have in Obama is a skillful but old-style Chicago politician in a new wrapper, who will do whatever he has to do, say whatever he has to say, to get elected. And that's not just me, that's his (former) mentor of 20 years, the Right Reverend (and Racist) Jeremiah Wright who put it more bluntly: "He's a politician. He will do whatever he has to do."

What you also have with Obama is not only his party's presumpt-ive nominee but also possibly the most presumpt-uous of presidential pretenders, given a virtual pass if not outright support by the liberal mainstream media, with a tissue-thin national resume, a dangerous naivete about international affairs, no understanding of (and not much real appreciation for) our armed forces, and with the audacity of arrogance, the hype of hope, the chant of change, and enough ego to energize all of America (if we could convert that ego into real energy) for the next hundred years.