The administration began posting online a partial log of White House visitors, and it instituted policies aimed at responding more quickly and completely to Freedom of Information Act requests from journalists, academics and the public. It has also restricted the hiring of lobbyists within the administration, banned gifts from lobbyists and taken other steps to slow the “revolving door” between government and the private sector.

But for transparency junkies, it wasn’t all roses:

On transparency issues, the administration has raised concerns among open-government advocates by regularly using the “state secrets” privilege to continue keeping some national security issues out of public view, and Mr. Obama reversed course last year and refused to make public photos showing abuses of terrorism detainees. The controversy over the public release of some 90,000 documents from the Afghanistan war by the group WikiLeaks could result in more pressure to limit public disclosures.

And then there’s superlobbyist Tony Podesta, who jokingly hailed Eisen’s departure ”the biggest lobbying success we’ve had all year.” Maybe the watchdog groups have good reason to be worried after all.

He offered “few regrets,” the Times writes, and said he thought his office “had done a pretty good job of addressing the challenges that come with deep water.”

MMS offices across the country have struggled with their tight relationship with the industries they regulate. Stories of hard-partying officials spinning through the revolving door generally portray these offices as self-contained sites of corruption. The Times, on the other hand, takes pains to demonstrate that in Louisiana, the camaraderie between the regulators and the industry was a natural outgrowth of the state’s love-affair with oil drilling. The article casts Oynes as steady figure who valued the economic contributions the industry made to Louisiana and who, with limited resources and power, raced to catch regulations up with rapidly advancing technology.

But by the end of the story, that argument begins breaking down. First, it turns out that Oynes deferred an important decision about the environmental impact of a deepwater drilling technique to the office’s head engineer — who was later fired “for accepting gifts from a drilling company, and [who] pleaded guilty to lying on his ethics forms,” according to the Times — a story typical of problematic MMS offices elsewhere.

Early in the story, Oynes points to a regulatory office he helped set up as an improvement in oversight, but, later we find out that, according an inspector general report, the office is:

“an ethics-free zone, where inspectors routinely took industry gifts and did favors for industry friends. They went hunting and fishing on the companies’ tab, accepted company meals, went skeet shooting at the companies’ expense, and in one case flew on a private plane to watch Louisiana State University in the Peach Bowl.”

And Oynes himself comes off as less than sanguine about a National Marine Fisheries Service proposal to put independent overseers on boats testing for oil:

“He was screaming at the top of his lungs,” said a former agency scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he fears government reprisals. “He said, “N.M.F.S. is trying to shut down oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico!’ ”

Speaking at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, Bromwich said, “I’ll say right now that I’ll impose a lifetime ban on contacts with the agency, and I hope that sets an example for other people in the agency and other people throughout government,” the Post reports.

Sike!

From CQ’s Jonathan Allen comes a heartwarming tale of lobbyists, lawmakers and the revolving door that just keeps on spinnin’ round, even into Pelosi’s office.

Pelosi announced Monday that she is hiring one of Washington’s top lobbyists, Richard Meltzer, to be her policy director. It is a position in which Meltzer, a longtime Pelosi friend, is certain to have tremendous input into the shape of legislation affecting the more than 200 clients he represented according to federal lobbying disclosure records.

In a Monday press release announcing the move, Pelosi’s office described Meltzer as having “wide-ranging domestic and foreign policy experience.” They weren’t kidding. Meltzer, Allen points out, has lobbied for such industry giants as ExxonMobil, R.J. Reynolds, Ford, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson.

The entire list, Allen notes dryly, “is far too long to mention in a single story.”

Mr. Summers, the former Treasury secretary and Harvard president who is now the chief economic adviser to President Obama, earned nearly $5.2 million in just the last of his two years at one of the world’s largest funds, according to financial records released Friday by the White House.

Impressive as that might sound, it is all the more considering that Mr. Summers worked there just one day a week.

Now, of course, he’s a leading voice in Washington’s efforts to bail out the banks. Is there any wonder why the White House swooped in to dilute Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) proposed limits on executive pay?

Today, Davis spokesman Brian McNicoll took exception with the implication that Davis used his years in the Capitol to land the plum position. McNicoll said Davis, a former counsel to a Virginia-based technology firm, “went out of his way” to find a position in which he wouldn’t be lobbying his former Hill colleagues directly. A statement from his new employer, Deloitte Consulting, indicates that Davis will offer “strategic guidance to help us better serve the federal government.”

Readers can decide if the “revolving door” label applies.

“This is not a revolving door for me,” Davis said. “I am basically doing what I did before I went into government.”

Deloitte, for its part, is being more forthright. In a statement issued Monday, the global consulting firm cites, as one of Davis’s strengths, his role as “an expert in federal procurement policy.”

Davis, who will serve as director of Deloitte’s federal government services division, starts his new job next week.