Ethics Rules and the Washington Post Salons

In the kerfuffle over the dinners to which the Washington Post had planned to invite administration officials and lobbyists, who would pay a seriously hefty entry fee, the Obama administration has issued a reminder to appointees about its ethics rules governing gifts and events, and notified folks about its electronic request forms for dealing with both.

My sense of the debacle is that it was poorly handled in a way that made the whole series of events look much worse than the initial conception. And given the ethics rules, I wonder who and how many folks from the Obama administration had actually committed to attend--if any had. I have a sneaking suspicion that the whole series may not have come off the way the Post planned, which makes for a lot of smoke and very little actual heat.