The Bush administration asked an appeals court Wednesday to overrule a federal judge and allow the White House to keep secret any records of visitors to Vice President Dick Cheney's residence and office. To make the visitor records public would be an unprecedented intrusion into the daily operations of the vice presidency," the Justice Department argued in a 57-page brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. Congress has excluded presidential and vice presidential records from the public's reach - making the visitor logs untouchable, the government said. "There is thus no dispute that, for example, appointment calendars maintained by the office of the vice president, revealing the identities of visitors and the time of their visits, would not be subject to disclosure," the Justice Department said in its response. A lawsuit over similar records revealed in September that Republican activists Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed - key figures in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal - landed more than 100 meetings inside the Bush White House.