Obama Sisters School Lunch Poster Will Stay Up

Those posters in Washington's Union Station that refer to the Obama daughters and urge Congress to get behind healthy school lunches are staying up, despite calls from White House lawyers to take them down.

That's what I was told by the president of the group that put them there, Neal Barnard, who runs the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs used the poster campaign to reissue a call to the media to protect the privacy of the Obama daughters, Malia and Sasha.

"Without getting into the specifics, we've been very clear, I think, from even before the administration started that their two girls would have a very private life, and we want to protect that private life and their privacy. And we hope that others will be respectful, as many in the media have been, about not using the girls as a publicity stunt," Gibbs said.

It's a heck of a publicity stunt.

After White House Associate Counsel Karen Dunn and Deputy Associate Counsel Ian Bassin asked Barnard to remove the posters, his organization called The Washington Post, generating a front page story on Tuesday.

When we chatted, Barnard was at an "Inside Edition" interview, had done CNN and had fielded press calls all day.

The 14 posters feature the picture of a little girl with the headline, "President Obama's daughters get healthy school lunches. Why don't I?" The names and faces of the Obama sisters do not appear. The Obama daughters go to one of Washington's elite private schools. (They transferred this year from another private school -- the University of Chicago Lab School.)

One of the top legislative agenda items of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is to have Congress mandate that school lunches be required to "provide daily nondairy, vegetarian meal options and a healthful nondairy milk alternative in their regular meal service."

And that cause, said Barnard, is "one of the most important topics to any family in America and it would be ridiculous to back away."

When we talked, Barnard said one reason he intended to let the poster campaign run its course -- they are supposed to be up through Aug. 31 -- is that he is not convinced the White House lawyers who called him were speaking for President Obama or First Lady Michelle. "The First Family has not objected to the ad," Barnard said.

That strikes me as, well, an odd defense. The First Parents have made it very clear the kids are off limits. That's the policy that has been passed along to staff. I doubt that the lawyers were freelancing when they made the call.