Yet little over a year ago in September 2008, candidate Obama placed his seal of approval on the actions of one of his top funders, Code Pink co-founder and terrorist supporter Jodie Evans, by meeting with her at a high profile Hollywood fundraiser just days after Jodie Evans attempted to storm the stage during Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech.

Jodie Evans had committed identity theft that enabled her to sneak past security at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

After the incident, the mainstream media refused to report on the ties between Obama and Jodie Evans.

The presidential campaign of Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, showing the judgment that eventually doomed his candidacy, failed to call out Obama for the outrageous behavior by one of his top fundraisers.

After giving her speech, the McCain campaign apparently failed to inform Palin of Jodie Evans’ ties to Obama and terrorists.

During an impromptu interview with Big Government at one of her Going Rogue booksigning appearances, Palin expressed interest in knowing more about Jodie Evans’ role as a bundler for Obama and the Code Pink co-founder’s work with state sponsors of terrorism. In recounting her acceptance speech in Going Rogue, Palin did not mention the Jodie Evans incident.

The Washington Post’s Paul Kane reported the incident as it happened:

10:45 p.m. A pair of Code Pink activists just got to the very edge of the stage and were a moment away from apparently running on stage, right by the Kentucky slot on the floor next to a host of McCain’s most senior staffers.

Secret Service men grabbed them at last minute and literally dragged them out.

In a press release bragging about their effort, Code Pink claimed they were given convention passes by “a Republican delegate who was frustrated with the Republican party and Sarah Palin.”

Jodie Evans had been photographed earlier that day wearing the name tag of an alternate delegate from Indiana named Annie Eckrich. An outraged Eckrich denied giving Code Pink her credentials.

In an interview with the Jefferson County Journal about Rae Abileah, another member of Code Pink who committed identity theft, Jodie Evans boasted about stealing and using a C-SPAN press pass the previous night to sneak into the Republican convention.

A video report by WCCO featured an interview with Jodie Evans and her fellow Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin about how they infiltrated the convention and got very close to Palin.

Jodie Evans failed to inform the reporter that she was a top fundraiser for Obama. She audaciously gave the reporter a photo of herself meeting Obama at a fundraiser, and told her it was a photo of her protesting Obama. The gullible reporter didn’t question what Code Pink’s Jodie Evans told her, including the claim she was handed credentials outside the XCel Center an hour prior to Palin’s speech.

Jodie Evans was welcomed by Barack Obama at a $28,500 per person fundraiser held at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills less than two weeks after she committed identity theft and attempted to storm the stage during Sarah Palin’s speech

According to the pool report, Obama greeted his campaign donors and posed for photographs.

That Obama would meet with and take money from Jodie Evans after her actions at the Republican Convention implied his seal of approval on her behavior.

A little more than a week following the meeting with Obama, Jodie Evans met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York City.

Candidate Obama was never challenged by the media about his connection with Jodie Evans.

Neither was President Obama, even though he met with Jodie Evans this fall, just weeks after she reportedly met with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Identity theft, event crashing, cavorting with terrorist governments, sympathizing with Osama bin Laden, calling our troops baby killers — what does someone have to do to get denounced by Barack Obama?

Yes, that’s right, express your love and support for America. (L.A. Times Nov. 20, 2009: Obama Now Pleading for Money to Fight Sarah Palin).

Most people have heard about the Virginia couple who apparently crashed the White House official dinner for the prime minister of India on Nov. 24. (It’s called an “official dinner” instead of a “state dinner” because the prime minister is not India’s head of state.) Congress has launched a probe and is demanding answers as to how uninvited people could end up shaking hands with the president of the United States and posing for photos with the VP and chief of staff.

One person Congress wants to speak with is Desiree Rogers, the White House Social Secretary. For dinners in previous administrations, the White House Social Office posted staffers at the entrance with a list of the invited guests to make sure fiascos like this can’t happen. Rogers, who holds her job because she’s an old buddy of First Lady Michelle Obama, evidently didn’t care enough to take this simple precaution.

But Congress won’t get the chance to ask Rogers, because President Obama is invoking executive privilege. That’s the legal doctrine for the president and certain executive-branch officials around him to refuse to testify in court or before Congress.

The president has a legitimate claim to executive privilege. Under the Constitution’s separation of powers, the president is a coequal branch of government. He doesn’t answer to Congress, nor does his White House staff.

So the problem is not that Obama is claiming the privilege; it’s the gross hypocrisy in doing so. On Mar. 31, 2008, then candidate-Obama blasted President Bush for not sharing with Congress or collaborating enough with Congress. (Ironically, that speech focused on avoiding congressional approval for official actions, a practice that Obama has put on steroids with his armies of unaccountable “czars,” but that’s another column.) He criticized invoking executive privilege in other speeches as well. He pledged an unprecedented level of information-sharing with Congress.

It seems those were just words. Chalk it up as another promise broken.

And even then, Obama’s claim of executive privilege—while legitimate—is weak. That privilege exists for two reasons. First, to protect foreign policy concerns like diplomatic secrets and military matters. Second, to ensure that the president can get candid advice on making difficult decisions and fulfilling his duties.

None of those have anything to do with Desiree Rogers. She’s the social secretary, not the defense secretary.

It’s true that White House staffers are more covered by executive privilege than officials in departments and agencies, because the White House is the president’s personal staff, whereas departments are created by Congress and answerable to Congress.

But executive privilege radiates from the president himself, not the White House. The less involved the president is, the less executive privilege is in play. When the president talks with his national security advisor about troop movements in Afghanistan, that’s protected. But when Michelle Obama’s buddy is talking with her staff about how to run the social aspects of a dinner, it makes a mockery out of an important presidential privilege to say that this political flunky shouldn’t have to answer for her gross incompetence.

Congress should subpoena her, and then fight this out in Court when the president refuses to let her testify. But despite Nancy Pelosi’s promise to provide unprecedented transparency, you can count on her not allowing Congress to do anything that embarrasses her party’s leader.

Of course, if Republicans retake the House next year, then they could still subpoena Rogers. If President Obama again invokes executive privilege, the GOP would have a decent chance of beating him in court.

Desiree Rogers obviously isn’t up to the job she holds, and she should have to confess her dismal failure to Congress and the American people, and then be fired. But that’s not how things work in Obamaland, because it’s the Chicago way to take care of your friends even when they can’t cut it, and then blame career public servants—here, the U.S. Secret Service—and go after those just trying to get the facts.

This incident doesn’t figure prominently in the big scheme of things. But it’s yet another example of how the change Obama delivers isn’t the change he promised.

Ken Klukowski is a fellow and senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union.

That these two–Reality TV star-wannabes, natch–came within a handshake of POTUS and the Indian Prime Minister is astonishing. Stay tuned, as we think there must be more to this story.