As I blogged the other day, Douglas Shulman, the commissioner of Internal Revenue, has been a frequent visitor to the White House, unlike any of his predecessors in that job.

Now the Daily Caller has been doing a little journalism. It reports this morning that Shulman visited the White House a stunning total of 157 times during the Obama administration. How does that compare with other high-ranking officials? Eric Holder, holding the far more important job of attorney general and the president’s close friend, shows up in the White House visitors’ log less than half as often as Shulman. The Daily Caller writes:

Shulman has more recorded visits to the White House than HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (48), DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano (34), Education Secretary Arne Duncan (31), former Energy Secretary Steven Chu (22) and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates (17) combined.

To be sure, as the Daily Caller points out, some people are pre-cleared and don’t have to sign in and so may not always show up in the logs. (Perhaps, for the sake of history, not to mention journalism, that practice should end and everybody be required to sign in, with a classified log for highly sensitive visits by ambassadors, etc.)

Asked by a congressman at the recent hearings why he had visited so often, Shulman replied with a smirk that showed a contempt for Congress, if not contempt of Congress, that perhaps the Easter egg roll with his kids was one reason. But as Brit Hume tweeted regarding my original post, “Sooner or later this question will have to be answered: What was the ex-IRS chief doing at the White House all those times?”