From healthcare to public debt, pundits are attacking President Barack Obama's first State of the Union address from almost every conceivable angle.

When it comes to Obama transparency, Electronic Frontier Foundation privacy attorney Kurt Opsahl points out that the chief executive told the American public one thing Wednesday night and a federal appeals court another just a few weeks ago.

The issue at hand surrounds lobbying. "It's time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress," the president said during his televised address.

But, before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month, the Justice Department argued that it should not have to disclose the names of telecommunication industry lobbyists. Those companies successfully lobbied Congress and President George W. Bush in 2008 to approve legislation that provided their companies with retroactive immunity to lawsuits accusing them of funneling, without warrants, all domestic electronic communications to the National Security Agency.

That legislation killed the EFF's case against the telecommunication companies. The EFF then sued the government, seeking the lobbyists' identities. A California federal judge agreed, and then the Obama administration appealed.

"There is no public interest in the compelled disclosure of the representatives' identities" (.pdf), the administration told the federal appeals court in San Francisco Dec. 14.

Opsahl points out that there is no national security concern with disclosing the information.

"What they want to hide will not give some advantage to our adversaries," Opsahl said in a telephone interview. "They want to protect the telecoms and themselves from the embarrassment to be involved in lobbying to deny millions of Americans their day in court."

It remains to be seen, Opsahl added, "whether the administration will file another paper with the court clarifying that their position has changed."

In case you forgot, Obama, as a senator from Illinois, voted for the immunity bill that President George W. Bush signed.

Photo: Tim Sloan/AP

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