Don't let it be forgot that once there was a spot. For one brief, shining moment that was known as Spamelot.

The WH ends email spam after Fox WH correspondent Major Garrett confronted Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs last week after hundreds of Fox fans reported unsolicited emails from Obama heath care hack David Axelrod.

Politico:  Fox News reports that it is pushing the White House to answer a Freedom of Information Act request demanding the e-mail list the White House used last week to distribute a message from a top official intended to counter alleged myths about President Barack Obama's health care reform proposals.

Trouble is: the White House offices which advise Obama are not covered by FOIA and don't have to respond to any such request. The reason is essentially the same covered in this post about an earlier Fox claim that the White House might be breaking the Privacy Act, which also doesn't cover key presidential offices.

Some groups are pressing the White House to comply voluntarily with FOIA requests for records from a support office there called the Office of Administration, notwithstanding a D.C. Circuit ruling in May that the office is not covered by FOIA.

The White House Office of Health Reform, set up by Obama in an April executive order, seems to be the classic kind of office that primarily advises the president and lacks substantial independent authority--making it immune from FOIA. (In that order, there is a vague mention of "implement[ing] strategic initiatives" for the health care system. That would seem to be the kind of operational function that could lean towards some kind of coverage, but even the National Security Council isn't covered by FOIA and it's probably more operational than any White House health care office ever would be.)

Even if the White House were required to respond to Fox's FOIA, I can't imagine that any government agency would ever turn over a mass list of individual e-mail addresses in response to a FOIA request. It could be seen as jeopardizing those individuals' privacy and subjecting them to just the kind of spam that the White House stands accused of delivering.