Transportation Department IG's Report Shows $1.1B in Federal Money Paid for 50 Subpar Projects
Watch: Hostile Town Hall Audience Presses Sen. Arlen Specter
Republican turned Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter faced an angry crowd at a town hall meeting today in Lebanon, Pa. Frustrated voters challenged him again and again about health care reform -- Specter attempted to explain his position, and said he...
Obama daughters off-limits: White House
by Mark Silva and updated
The White House has made it clear that it did not approve of posters asking the question: "President Obama's daughters get healthy school lunches. Why don't I?"
But the posters stay.
Has the White House Counsel's Office indeed asked a nonprofit organization to take down the posters, which appeared in the Union Station train depot in Washington last week in a bid to convince Congress to offer schoolchildren healthier lunches? (See the ad here: nutrition ad.pdf)
"Without getting into the specifics, we've been very clear, I think, from even before the administration started, that their two girls would have a very private life, and we want to protect that private life and their privacy,'' White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today. "And we hope that others will be respectful, as many in the media have been, about not using the girls as a publicity stunt.''
Soon after the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine placed its posters with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, in a $20,000 campaign on nutrition policy, White House lawyers asked the group to pull the ads featuring 8-year-old Jasmine Messiah, a Florida resident who says her school offers no vegetarian or vegan lunches.
PCRM President Neal Barnard, a physician and nutrition researcher, received a phone call about the posters from the counsel's office. He made a call of his own, to a First Amendment lawyer, and has asked the White House to reconsider its objections.
"We're definitely keeping them up,'' Barnard told Tribune's Washington Bureau today. "First of all, the president and the first family have no objection to these ads, from what we have seen. I am quite sure that the president would say, 'That girl deserves a healthy meal, just like any other child in America.'
"The president is surrounded by people who are there to protect him.... And sometimes they are overzealous,'' Barnard said. "People are trying to exploit the first family, but our ad is perfectly appropriate. What it does is talks about an important issue.''
The White House counsel's office, when it called last week, ''said, 'Take take the ads down.' They effectively implied that we would be in for legal action if we did not,'' Barnard said. "I called one of the First Amendment attorneys here in Washington who said, "No. 1, they don't have a leg to stand on.... That would effectively constitute censorship.'''
Barnard called the White House back and said, the ads stay.
The group has placed 14 of the ads around Union Station, where congressional staffers coming to work will see them. The group is attempting to convince Congress to consider vegetarian options in the Child Nutrition Act under review this fall. The majority of schools in the National School Lunch Program do not offer vegetarian or vegan options, despite American Medical Association support for those options, according to Barnard.
The president's daughters attend a private school in Washington.
The posters don't mention the president's children by namenor do they portray their images, the way that the "Sweet Sasha" and "Marvelous Malia'' dolls made by Ty Inc. pictured above. The White House objected to them, and the toymaker stopped using the daughters' names. (Ty moved on to Bo, the Beanie Baby.)
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar