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omb is the center for this transparency efforts. with the president's office implementing the nuts and bolts of the recovery act and spending, in four months, it has been for a half months since the administration began. we had to budget cycles and the stimulus. it has been an extraordinary amount of work. given the fact -- the economic mess we're in, given how presidential priorities are implemented through economics and budgets, it is natural that omb would assume this role at this time. combined with that are some powerful personalities and very effective people so forth that have allowed for that to happen. >> do you worry that too much authority, too much power has been sucked into the white house

and diminishing the rules of the cabinet secretaries? >> i think that is not so much about omb. there is talk about the various policy councils and their policies within the white house. this is a unique time. there are extraordinary challenges and the need for coordination is something that is essential. i think it is having -- all the various policy councils are playing a creative role in bringing together the thinking around the administration. given the ambition and amount of work that is taken on, it has to happen in a unified way. >> that is kind of bs, maybe. -- a yes, maybe. you work in an office most people think of doing the work that is being suggested. you are deciding which

techniques can be used on prisoners when the office of legal policy is not the office of legal counsel but it has an important role in the transparency question. that has been your background. there has been disappointment on the progress of side in that arena -- on the question. there's this case about withholding vice-president cheney's testimony to patrick fitzgerald that came up as a question. tell us about the role of the office of legal policy in driving information policy in particular and how would you access the new administration's efforts -- assess the administration's efforts to open up the government for people? >> i have to say that it is good

to be here and see so many old friends. i have been on some panels at past conventions and that has been an honor. what i have enjoyed is the time between sessions when we get to have a one-on-one conversations and there are so many friends who are here and the relationships that we have built over the short history of acs. as i have continued on, many of you have given me advice and insight and support and i certainly appreciate it. for if some of you are part of the administration. many of you will join it over the course of the next four or eight years. if there is something i would say, it would be please stay engaged. we need your ideas and talent. we need your energy. you really do sustain us.

thank you all for being here and continuing to be engaged. olp is not as high-profile as these white house offices. i thought i would do one-on-one in terms of olp. when i was a professor, i am on leave at george washington university, there would be so many people who would say, how're things at georgetown? [laughter] so now i am in a situation where people say, what is going on that to old, -- at old, when will you really is torture memos, that kind of thing. if there is a nutshell description, it is olc tells us what the law is. olp tells us what the law should

be. with olc, olc serves as an outside counsel to the executive branch agencies and serves as the gc at doj where ieas olp spearheads policy initiatives. we do other things. we beg judges for the white house and coordinate the rulemaking in the department. in terms of policy, in terms of legislation, policy initiatives, olp is known as the think tank of the justice department. in the reagan and registration, for example, they came up with the legislation which resulted in the current federal sentencing system. they dealt a lot with death penalty issues, hideous issues,

and came forward with an original meaning of jurisprudence. in the clinton administration, they spearheaded anti-terrorism legislation in the aftermath of the oklahoma city bombing. spearheaded the violence against women act. and the brady bill. in the bush administration office, -- the office initiated the patriot act. if there is something that -- you talked about state -- state secrets, whistle-blower is another issue we are working on. we work with different components within doj and also different agencies around the government. so really balance out and work through and negotiate these institutional interests. the criminal division at doj

has different interests than the civil rights division and cit -- add the zero j and dea made -- the primary focus is preventing trafficking of illegal drugs whereas hhs mixed sure how people have access to -- sick people have access to drugs. how do we become a neutral arbiter? certainly there are some big issues that are out there with regard to state secrets and other issues and their competing interests. one thing that was fascinating to me and maybe this is because i was unable professor. you see the difference between republicans and democrats. maybe at a certain point, people could see a difference between

senator clinton and senator obama during a primary. when you deal with government, often there are differences between components of the same administration. how do you work through that? how are you going to negotiate through that so that you can come up with some coherent policy? that is what we're trying to do in a variety of areas, including those that you mentioned. >> maybe i will go back to you -- both of you. this is an administration that made a commitment to policy. one thing that is not transparent is who is in charge. we have the cio and the transparency initiatives. the should the public look to to

hold responsible for open government in this administration? >> she is more in charge that i am. >> the answer is everyone is in charge of transparency and open government. this is a huge commitment of this administration that everyone has their hands in a piece of it. naturally, probably the offices that are setting policy on that area probably thatostp, -- is ostp. i think those two offices are probably more involved than others in terms of setting policy. this is something that is crosscutting every agency and every office in the white house to be committed to. it will come from everywhere. i think those two offices are probably more. >> do you think the project is going well?

>> the recovery act is a great example. we have the most unprecedented level of transparency with regard to the spending of the recovery act funds that sold for have been out there. it is a huge project to track dollars but there are web sites created for every government agency. there are state and local grantees that have their own web sites. it is an extraordinary effort. where we started and came from is huge. that is not to say that there is not a lot more that needs to happen. >> first, i think a couple of very important concepts that -- are new in terms of the political culture would be transparency and collaboration. they are very consistent with technology concepts. i think that they do characterize what is happening in terms of collaboration,

whether it is across agencies, departments and also in terms of transparency when we talk about foia executive order and ethics executive order, this administration is unprecedented in terms of the transparency it has provided. >> you worked for an administration that was proud of going the other direction and claiming executive privilege in secrecy and the vice president was probably at the vanguard of that. you see a big difference -- a uc a big difference? the obama administration is pushing bush and cheney, making this big effort to connect with the public can be more transparent. there is politics in that as well. how do you judge that? >> i imagine there are differences and the differences may or may not be bigger than we

think once we start seeing more clashes between the branches. you're right that when it comes to the internal task forces that the administration has set up, you are more transparent than the bush administration was and the clinton administration was prior to that. to make, the real fight is about transparency. the fight was over executive privilege when it was putting congress against the presidency. you do not normally see that when both parties told the congress and the white house. if i hope at some point that the control of the congress and the presidency come to differ over the next two years, i think you are going to see this clashes and that is when you will see whether -- with the extent to which president obama is committed to transparency. i happen to think there is an enormous value with being able to shield some of your highest advise from public scrutiny.

if you want the unvarnished honest advice of your visors, you are best off not splashing what advice they give you on to the front pages. i will use a congressional example. i do not think many members of congress would want to have made public the internal e-mail between them and their staff over what to vote on a certain bill and what considerations they take. that is the type of non transparency that we were advocating in the bush administration. if you want the president to get unvarnished advice from his advisers on very sensitive and controversial issues, that it - should have been disclosed to the public. -- should not have been disclosed. you can i get the best advice from your advisers. there remains to be seen whether at the highest levels of where transparency is at issue, this administration is or will not be as transparent. they have not had the types of

fights we had once the government became divided in the bush administration. >> @@@@ e that you are only giving him stuff from my progress of perspective. what is the role of your office? >> thie staff secretary's

office is an inward white house looking office. all the paper goes through this the secretary's office and the core of the job is insuring that by the time the decision memo gets to the president, it reflects his advisers' views. there is a process that you go through as one of the policy councils is working on developing policy and is working with agencies on policy. it works its way through and there is a certain amount of consensus developed. we will make sure that we will circulated and make sure that his senior advisers have had a chance to have input so that if you have larry summers working away on something, it does not happen in a silo so the doors that has not had a chance to

weigh in. there are a serious difference s of opinion in the white house. this is a president, he wants to hear from this different advisers and he wants to make sure that he has the benefit of all these different opinions. you can see that if you get a policy working through in a silo and gets to him, he would not have the benefit of that. you could have a decision that might be wrong but you realize that it could have been better. that is the core part of the job. often it is with technology. one of the changes in the job is our office gets very substantively involved in going back to the authors and saying what about this? the president is likely to want to know about this. what about this issue? here is where conservatives -- this is the argument they make, how do we respond to that? there is a lot of working with the offices to make sure they are teeing it up and people are

engaging. the president and also -- also asks questions. it would be a meeting with the president and an initial memo and it will come back with questions. you get people involved in that. it is also with the agencies. one of the things when you are talking about earlier, you really do see the issue right now. the government has a tendency, the executive branch can become a silo. people can become a territorial. the one thing with these difficult economic issues is right now you have to have someone driving back coordination process. that is what you see with the energy and health care czars, bringing people to the table and

making sure their views are considered and they are part of the policy-making process and the president gets the best advice he can get. >> let's talk about one of the places i think progressives felt perhaps the biggest change would follow from a conservative administration to a progressive administration is in the selection of judges. we now have with the selection of judge sotomayor, an inkling about the way the president is thinking about this. you are involved during the course of the transition, and ron, you were involved. ticket in order. whoever wants to go first. what is his criteria ask i wou? why has it been so slow in producing nominees?

>> i want to make two quick points. my perspective is limited. olp focuses on vetting judges. we support through the vetting process. i will say that the first bush nominees were in may in terms of the court of appeals. the obama has that beat by a couple months at least with regard to nomination. i would just from a factual point say that nominations, the obama administration is ahead of previous administrations. >> only two so far. >> ok. >> do not over claim.

or do more so it is up to four. >> there were only a few nominations that were made and those were people like roger gregory early on. when we talk about confirmations, it was september, the kind of thing. >> ok. that is it on timing. we were up to four. what kind of people will be put on the court? a lot of people want to counterbalance and balance out the conservative judges particularly on the court of appeals that president bush and previous republican presidents have put on. what kind of attributes to uc president obama looking for in selecting judges? >> i can speak from the transition standpoint where we worked on this. it was clear that he was looking for very capable, intellectually gifted lawyers, jurists, law

professors. that was first and foremost. clearly superior qualifications. i think my sense of the extra factor that -- the distinguishing factor was more just a sense that this was a person who understood -- who had a sense of why they wanted to be a judge. not just a pristine piece of paper, not just reading bricks, but understood and had some interest in the human dimensions of judging, who wanted -- had some life experience dealing with people and i have this sense the president was not that interested in -- was more interested in people who had litigated real cases and worked with people and did not have to be in the context of litigation. someone who had a sense of the human dramas and stories behind the cases. that was the extra factor.

>> he has been involved in the supreme court nomination. the word empathetic has come up a lot. the president cares about this is someone who thinks about the impact of a law. these cases involve people. they're not just abstract legal questions when they come before the court and these people have had a real world experience that lets them and an approach when they think about the impact of the decisions they are making on people. it is not a squishy i feel sorry for this person. it is about a real world understanding about how is this decision going to play out? what does it mean in the workplace? is it realistic to say that someone should be able to complain about discrimination when she has not seen enough in a paycheck to recognize it is there? it is a practical understanding of how these cases come up and what it means and how something will play out. >> you have selected a batch of

judges during the beginning of the clinton presidency. >> some of whom are here tonight. >> do you see any difference? what do you think president obama is looking for? >> there is some similarities and differences. with president obama, you start off with someone who is a brilliant lawyer himself, who was a litigator himself, himsand taught law and brings intellectual firepower and legal perspective to this decision. this was the choice that he spent time on. he reread a tremendous amount of material on her. in the end he came away with the person he thought combined great

legal acumen and great life experiences and great practice experience. a divorce practice experience as a private lawyer and prosecutor and appellate court judge. the best rounded. it was that combination of things the president was looking for in the case of judge sotomayor. president obama is the only president ever who spoke individually to every single member of the senate judiciary committees. all the democrats and republicans before he made this choice. i do not know of that means more are likely to vote for his nominee or not but the effort to reach out and listen to people, understand what was on their minds, factored into his decision making is a kind of approach that hopefully will set a better tone as we go forward

in this process. >> i am trying to group the questions and combined them because we have so many. there is a number of questions that the president is doing too much but there is a decidedly the strain of questions that he is not doing enough in one particular area. that is the question of gay rights. including marriage, adoption, medical insurance, several questions about how he could have filed the doma race that was filed. i cannot know whether -- and do not know whether i am directing this to the right person. does anyone want to take that up? i do not know whether it has come across your desk, spencer or, ron, you want to discuss

what the reaction is to do not ask, do not tell. >> i will work on the matter. >> somebody has to be brave hear. >> it was an awful lot better than the brief that was written in the bush administration. there is no question, a personal statement. there were some things in there that should not be in there. they did make an effort -- they are trying to make arguments and eliminate arguments the bush administration has made. the administration is trying hard and moving slowly. they announced yesterday he asked for presidential memorandum extending benefits to same-sex couples for travel

benefits and health benefits. it is a complicated area of law. we are constrained by doma so he is trying to do what he can do within the confines and extend those benefits and said clearly he wants to be working with congress to support the legislation that would extend benefits and to repeal doma. no one thinks it is fast enough right now. i know the president cares about this and is working on, he wants to reverse do not ask, do not tell. >> what she said. in the stand when people are impatient with the pace of progress. i would say in our defense progress is mostly in the right direction and there is a question of pace. we have only been here 125 days.

in those 125 days we have had many irons in the fire. i share lisa's view. of the frustration that people who care about these issues field. i hope that next year when we have this conference, and the question gets asked what it does not elicit the same kind of applause that it elicited. i hope we have more progress. there is applause about the accomplishments we have made. >> i hope you're right. i will read this question. much of the administration's political policy and legal agenda