First, Process Stories. That's basically any news story that shows the public the inner workings of Government or Politics. They say that seeing how Laws get passed (or governing) is like watching sausage get made. Any article that shows how the sausage is made is a Process Story. It's also a way to eat up some column inches in a Newspaper when you don't have any actual news to print.
Second, Saturday. If you want to bury a news story in America, you release word on Friday Night, aka the Friday Night Document Dump. Dump a story after 6:00pm, East Coast Time, and it'll miss the Network National News (which most Americans still watch), and odds are it won't get traction even in time for the Sunday Morning Talkers.
Basically, the whole point of Obama's Lobbying ban is that he doesn't want Lobbyists, people paid to schill for various Companies, Industries and Interest Groups, in his Administration making policy. We want to be sure people in his Administration are doing things because they're in the interests of the American people, and not eyeing a future paycheck once they leave Government Service.
After campaigning on promises to end the influence of lobbyists in the White House, Mr. Obama has imposed rules that bar officials on his transition team from handling any issues in areas of policy where they have lobbied over the last 12 months or from seeking to influence the same agencies for the next 12 months.
The people that thes articles are talking about aren't governing. Right now, they're just going into the various Federal Agencies they've been assigned, to see what's going on, and reporting back to the President-Elect. That's it. Some of them might even take jobs in the Government under a President Obama, but as long as they're not working in the fields they're lobbying in it shouldn't be a problem.
My problem with these stories is that they're based on a false premise, then they turn around and accuse Obama of violating the false premise. The rules as laid out aren't as puritanical as they're being made out to be. They make it sound like there's a complete ban on Lobbyists, when there's not, and that Obama's violating it by having a Lobbyist anywhere in 500 miles of him. Or they make Lobbying out to be a disease, and once infected the only place you can go into various Lobbyist Leper colonies around the world.
Lobbyists have caused a lot of problems, especially in the current administration. But again, this is another situation were people are upset, but are getting upset about the wrong thing. While, I'm not a fan of the process, the problem isn't Lobbying itself. There should be people out in Washington advocating for ideas and policies. The problem was, under the Bush Administration, Lobbyists were allowed to take over the process of Legislating and Governing. It's one thing for a Lobbyist to step in an advocate on behalf of his client that X Oil Company be given a tax break to employ more people. It's another when that same Lobbyist is allowed into the room with Congressional Staffers to re-write the Legislation for that tax break. It's still worse when that Lobbyist was working in the Government a week before, and calls his or her old office to get the sucker fast-tracked.
The current Lobbying regulations may not go far enough, but I think they're reasonable. The idea of banning Lobbyist contributions is to keep them from saying "Remember how good we were to you during the campaign, so now we need a favor." The idea of banning meals is to make the Lobbyist live or die by the strength of their ideas, not the fact they took you to a $300 dollar meal at Signatures. The idea of banning working for a Lobbying Firm after you leave Government Service is to keep your shoulder to the wheel, working for the American people, and not looking down the road to your next paycheck.
UPDATE (5:45pm Nov. 15th): The New York Times drags Biden into it, too. Never mind that Ronald A. Klain was once Chief of Staff to a good Vice President (Gore), he's caught the dreaded Lobbyist virus! Oooohhh.
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