This could be very interesting:

Obama Transition Team Pushing for Secret Legal Memos

A senior Justice Department official said today that “99.8 percent” of the department’s work with President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has gone smoothly. The 0.2 percent snag: The department has reservations about granting the team’s request to review classified legal opinions related to secret CIA and National Security Agency programs…

…The Justice official said the department was reluctant to provide the opinions to Obama’s team without permission from the two intelligence agencies whose activities they address…

…The opinions, some of which have been released to Congress in redacted form, contain the legal rationale of the NSA’s warrantless spying program and the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies, among other intelligence initiatives…

Barack Obama is the freakin’ president-elect – he and his team need to see those freakin’ legal opinions so that they’re ready on day one. As The Anonymous Liberal writes:

…There is no defensible reason whatsoever for withholding those memos from Obama’s Justice Department transition team. They’re going to see them in a month anyway. Why be so difficult about it now? Is there some reason they’re more worried about the content of those memos leaking now (as opposed to a month from now)…?

There is no defensible reason. There is a self-serving outgoing administration reason:

It was a ‘few bad apples’ alright – with names like Addington and Bybee and Yoo and Rumsfeld…

Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post does a schtick on dubya administration spokesperson Dana Perino.

…From her [Dana Perino] vantage point, the rise of the blogging culture has damaged journalism. With mainstream reporters posting blog items throughout the day, “it’s snappy, sarcastic. It doesn’t necessarily engender trust between the reporter and the press people.” And she sees the growth in “analysis” pieces as an excuse for some reporters to vent “what their feelings are about an issue…”

Blogging culture. Yeah, the great unwashed asks all those impertinent questions and demands answers. Unlike real journalists.