Contact with the Candidates

How should you respond if campaign staffers for John McCain or Barack Obama contact your agency seeking information? The National Institutes of Health has helpfully posted a link to a memo from Fred Fielding, counsel to the president, on this subject.

Here's the short version: There are a whole lot of restrictions on such contacts. It pays to read the full memo about them.

But if you just want to hang out with a buddy who works for one of the candidates, have no fear. The policy outlined in the memo "is not intended to prevent incidental, social or personal contacts between federal employees in their private capacities and any of their acquaintances who happen to be campaign organization personnel," Fielding writes.

(Hat tip: IEC Journal)