Transparency? Or a transparent political ruse?

President Obama promised the most transparent administration in the history of the universe. I read the memos. Since then, he’s not quite lived up to the promise, including balking at the reporter shield law and backtracking on the release of detainee interrogation photos.

Now Obama appointee John Berry, head of the Office of Personnel Management, is promising transparency, too.

“I believe we must hold ourselves and the government to a higher standard,” Berry writes in a Nov. 5 memo, “one that honors and supports the President’s strong commitment to a Government that is transparent and open.”

Berry is requiring any appointment of a former political appointee — anyone who held such a job in the past five years instead of the customary year before an election (The fact this covers of the entire Bush administration is surely coincidental) — get prior approval from his office before being named to a competitive civil service job.

The conservatives at Redstate.com smelled a rat and penned a piece headlined: “Obama Administration Intends to Purge Republicans From the Civil Service.”

“Under his new rules, made retroactive for five years, the Office of Personnel Management will examine civil service employees who got their start as political appointees in the Bush administration and terminate those employees,” writes Erick Erickson. “The order is retroactive to 2004, that moment when a number of Republican congressional staffers and others sought to embed into the second Bush administration right after the election.”

I’m not sure the memo requires review of past employees or simply new hires starting Jan. 1, but a loyal bureaucrat could easily misinterpret.

The liberal Media Matters quickly jumped to the defense.

“In fact, the OPM memo does nothing of the sort,” Adam Shah writes. “It merely beefs up current OPM rules aimed at preventing political appointees from 'burrowing in' to the civil service, thereby receiving the job security benefits that civil servants — but not political appointees — receive. While the memo states that agencies must seek permission from OPM to hire people as civil servants if they have been political appointees ‘within the last five years,’ nothing in the memo creates authority for anyone to fire current federal employees. Therefore, the OPM memo does not ‘purge’ anybody.”

OK, but if this is no big deal, why the need for the memo in the first place? There may not be a purge but it sure sounds like a hurdle for future civil service jobs for Republicans. A job can’t be denied merely for political affiliation, but everyone knows a lot of excuses can be found by true believers.

Rush Limbaugh, of course, found a problem with the memo.