Department Of Optics: Who's On The Call?

Lobbyists aren't beloved by the administration these days, as a perusal of the President's State of the Union would suggest, but the Treasury Department decided to invite K-Street insiders to special access telephone briefings, according to The Hill. Perfectly within bounds and within the White House's ethics ethos, but still -- optically -- maybe they should have waited, no? A White House official notes that lobbyists and business executives and labor unions and consumer groups and independent analysts were given the same invitation, so it's not accurate to call the briefings exclusive for lobbyists.