So the Obama administration can talk to Iran and North Korea, but not to lobbyists? This is the question posed by lawyer and registered lobbyist Daryl Owen in a recent Washington Post opinion piece.

Owen, once staff director for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, marvels that President Obama -- a constitutional scholar and former head of the Harvard Law Review -- has "issued an edict barring behavior that appears to be protected by the Bill of Rights."

Owen, of course, is referring to a March 20 presidential directive that says lobbyists cannot be present at any meetings to discuss stimulus projects, that federal officials cannot consider the opinions of lobbyists unless those opinions are put in writing and that any such written opinions must be posted online.

Owen's queries about this policy persist: The administration "does not intend to review the interrogation practices of the previous administration, but it will require all written communications from lobbyists to be posted on agency Web sites?" he asks. "It's dispensing with the term ‘enemy combatant' so as not to deprive individuals of access to the criminal justice system, but those classified as ‘registered lobbyists' will be deprived of their right to petition their government?"

"The president's repeated verbal, and now legal, castigation of the lobbying community suggests that either he does not understand the role played by lobbyists, or he understands but is demonizing us for political purposes," Owens writes. "Yet I am certain that the man for whom I voted (twice) is too smart to fall prey to the former and too noble to yield to the latter."

Read the full article at: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/02/AR2009040203099.html?referrer=emailarticle