Ordered to restore press access "immediately," White House complies hours later, only after a second order was threatened.

…(cont) 8:40 in the morning, the 24th: Politico, MS NOW and CNN reporters are denied access to the White House complex. That's the wire report, timestamped, and it says the denial came in violation of the ruling issued that same morning, by the same judge, over the same passes. I keep that sentence in front of me because the order and the denial share a birthday.

1:30 that afternoon: the outlets say access is restored. The director of the White House's press office put that into a court filing — attested, in writing, that it had happened. I don't know what else the filing says. I know what it says about that.

I did the subtraction leaning on the counter at the corner store, waiting on change, because I wanted the number without a machine doing it for me. 8:40 to 1:30. That's where the four hours and fifty minutes comes from. Not five — I checked twice, because rounding a number up by ten minutes is the kind of thing that gets a column sent back, and it should.

Is that gap what "immediately" looks like, once you write it down and then have to go make it happen? I don't have a second definition of the word to measure it against. I only have the one the judge used, and the two times, side by side, on the record.

Friday morning, the 25th: five networks are back in the White House television pool after what one outlet called a standoff over CNN's access — the same fight, one day later, in a different room of the same building.

What does a temporary order get you, if getting it enforced took a second filing and an afternoon?

The car's in the garage this week — fan belt again — and the mechanic tells me Thursday. I don't see the car until Thursday's nearly over. Nobody had to file anything to get him to finish. He just finished late, on his own, without a second appointment threatened over his head.

So the outlets are asking for permanent this time, not temporary — the New York Times has it as a bid for a longer reprieve while the lawsuit over the ban goes on. The receipts don't tell me what a permanent order would fix that the first one couldn't. They tell me what the first one needed, to get from "immediately" to done: a violation, an afternoon, and a filing with somebody's name on it.

Oh — one more thing, before you go. That filing, the one timestamped 1:30, the one that says access was restored — what does it tell you, sitting on top of an order that already said "immediately," four hours and fifty minutes earlier?