White House Lawyers Look to Protect Obama's Holy Likeness

The White House lawyers apparently don't have enough to do:

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama’s popularity makes him a marketer’s dream. Now, the honeymoon may be over for those trying to profit from his appeal.

White House lawyers want to control the use of the president’s image, recognizing the worldwide fascination about Obama’s election, First Amendment free-speech rights and easy access to videos and photos on the Web.

“Our lawyers are working on developing a policy that will protect the presidential image while being careful not to squelch the overwhelming enthusiasm that the public has for the president,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Good luck with all that. There's so much unlicensed Obama junk out there they could assign the whole FBI to this stuff and they'd never stomp it all out.

Given that Obama is a political figure, it's quite likely that any attempt to squelch the use of his image could well be a First Amendment violation.

But, silly me, the Constitution doesn't really mean what it used to mean.